Beyond Redemption
by unamuerte
Summary: What if: Judge Turpin never died? Sweeney burns Nellie, but the Judge rescues her? Once he discovers Nellie is in the clutches of the Judge, Sweeney realises he loves her. But is he beyond redemption? Which man will win Nellie’s heart? Eventual Sweenett
1. Chapter 1

**A/n: This was an idea I had after reading _She's a real lady_ by Das Lieblingsfach. I realised there aren't too many Turpin fics out there, probably for the same reason there's no Swucy. Don't worry, this fic will be eventual Sweenett, but not until after the Judge and Sweeney really mess with Nellie's head first. This is going to be pretty dark, so if you want fluff look elsewhere. I'm going to be alternating between Sweeney, Mrs Lovett and the Judge's P.O.V's.**

**~Beyond Redemption~**

It was all gone to hell. Sweeney had so carefully planned it, so carefully – but Mrs Lovett had ruined it all.

The Judge was safe in the city somewhere – and he would never come again.

He would never come again. And Sweeney had almost had him!

On the streets, Sweeney saw the faces of dead men. Dead men, everywhere he walked. Dead, or soon to be dead.

He grimaced at the sight of a woman and babe as he passed another corner. Sweeney gripped his razors close. Even in the puddles on the ground, he saw the Judge's throat, and his own razors slashing it wide. He had been so close!

The crowd kept surging forward.

But he, one strange, lonely man, stood looking back into the past.

_"Mr T?"_

Sweeney looked up, as if he were hearing Mrs Lovett's voice right in his ear.

He could still see her, standing beside him at the foot of the stairs below his barber shop.

"_Mr Todd," she'd said, "how's about I give this starved gentleman a drink an' a pie, and leave you an' the Judge to attend to your business, ay?"_

_Sweeney had nodded, and their eyes had met._

_It was an unspoken agreement: you deal with the judge, I'll handle the Beadle._

At their best, Sweeney reflected with another surge of anger, they had been fearsome partners.

"_Madam," the Beadle had said, interjecting with a greasy smirk, "There's been an awful stench about these parts, and they say your pie house is to blame. And I've been the one appointed ta see that it stops. I ought to do my duty…before _pleasure._" He leered suggestively at Mrs Lovett._

"_Sir," Sweeney interrupted, "no doubt you are a busy man. But Mrs Lovett would be truly indebted if you could sample one of her meat pies. After all, it has been said that you are an expert in culinary delights."_

_Mrs Lovett smiled knowingly, giving a slight, provocative curtsey. _

"_Sir," the Judge had said, frowning distastefully at Mrs Lovett, "there are far more pressing matters than pies. I won't ask you again – where has the ruffian got my Joanna?"  
_

"_Right this way, sir," Sweeney had pointed, directing him up the stairs._

"_I will wait here." The Judge crossed his arms._

"_Well then, if you'll just follow me, sir," Mrs Lovett had said, leading the Beadle into her shop. The door jangled behind them._

_Outside, Sweeney and the Judge stood, staring each other down. _

"_As we speak, sir," Sweeney had whispered, "the sailor is locked up in the bowels of Mrs Lovett's pie shop. He will harm you no more."_

_The Judge had leaned closer. "And Joanna?"  
_

"_She is waiting for you. Up there." Sweeney had raised his eyes up to the tonsorial parlour. _

_That was all the Judge needed. He began to ascend the stairs, when Sweeney grabbed his arm. "Be gentle with her, sir. She feels quite repentant."_

"_To be sure," the Judge had replied, moistening his lips. "But what of my apparel? How should I...present myself to her?" He had looked himself over, brushing dust off his vest and testing his breath._

"_Ah," Sweeney had answered, smiling with cold yes. "I know just the thing."_

_Sweeney drew a chair from Mrs Lovett's garden area and sat it beside the stairs. He'd whipped out a comb and some au de cologne. "Allow me to pamper you, sir. Pretty women cannot resist a freshly scented gentleman."_

_Perhaps Mrs Lovett was right, he'd considered. Waiting could be preciously sweet. It had taken ten minutes to convince the Judge he was handsome enough to go up to Joanna. Then he'd led the blind fool up the stairs, wounded him in the knees, and strapped him into the chair. Sweeney had had his razor around the man's throat, ready to slice it –_

_When someone below shrieked._

"_Wait here," Sweeney had said to the Judge, locking the door behind him. _

_After that, everything had unravelled._

Sweeney closed his eyes, and opened them. A woman in a red dress passed him on the street, and he was reminded again.

_Blood. Laughter. Flames. Sizzling. Shrieks. _

And then he had left. That stinking hell was far behind him now.

As for Mrs Lovett – her body could rot in the depths of her bakehouse forever. He didn't care if they found the boy either. Sweeney had left them where he'd slaughtered them; Toby in the meat grinder, Mrs Lovett in the oven.

In fact, Sweeney wanted them to be found. He could have lingered, savoured their deaths, but waiting was never Sweeney's style.

That, he thought bitterly as he made his way down Fleet Street, was Mrs Lovett's style. She had waited fifteen years so that she could lie to him. How she had lied to him! From the moment he had stepped in her shop, Mrs Lovett had had designs in her head. Designs for _him_.

And all the while his Lucy, his poor, battered Lucy, had wandered the streets alone. And he had finished her life – slit her throat with the same hands that had held her on their wedding night.

Sweeney knew he was a demon. It was part of him now, the need to spill blood. But for the death of Lucy, he placed the blame squarely on Mrs Lovett's shoulders. Treacherous wench. Well, she could go on waiting now. Wait for the whole of London to come and gawk at her burnt corpse. And the boy, her helper, could be strung up and gawked at too. He was sure that's what the Judge would do, once the grisly scene was discovered.

"Watch where ya goin', ya clumsy lout!" An old woman cursed at him. Sweeney had turned the corner, knocking her into the gutter.

It was another grey London day, full of the same pathetic, undeserving souls. Sweeney sloshed through the puddly streets, his work boots covered with thick clumps of mud. It was a small setback, he told himself. The Judge might set out the whole city to hunt him down, but Sweeney would not be deterred. He would have his revenge.

How?

He had exhausted all his chances. By the week out, every man and his dog would know his face. There was little he could do, Sweeney decided, but to hide. Across the street, he saw a man in a dark, heavy coat and umbrella. His beard was so thick it looked like a scarf from a distance. At once, Sweeney had the plan.

He would hide. Keep to the backstreets and alleyways. Steal what he needed, sleep where it was deserted, and_ kill_ anyone foolish enough to cross his path.

In time, he reasoned, they would forget him. Another scandal, another murder would take place, and they would leave him to be to wreak havoc as he pleased.

And there was only one person Sweeney wished to wreak havoc on.

The Judge.

There would come a time when the Beadle wouldn't always be around to guard him. When the police wouldn't be on his side. There would be a way, an opening into his house.

And with the greatest pleasure Sweeney had ever known, he would spill the swine's blood onto his satin bed sheets.

*** * * ***

**Well? Let me know what you think. I've written the second chapter, so if you like it and review I'll post it up!**


	2. Nellie Awakes

**A/N: Holy cow I'm surprised I got reviews for this! Especially because it's got Turpin he he. Here's the second chapter, as promised. From Nellie's P.O.V.**

**~Beyond Redemption~**

Nellie woke with a man's name on her lips. "Sweeney," she croaked.

She wanted to cry out, but couldn't. Her voice was weak. It had forgotten how to scream.

"Someone," she tried again in the darkness. She tried fumbling with her hands, but they wouldn't move. She tried to swing her legs off the bed. They too, were stuck. Even her neck was stiff. Just like a corpse, Nellie immediately thought.

Now she was trembling. Why would she think such an awful thing?

"Help!" The word sounded strange to her. It didn't sound like her voice at all.

And then she felt it. The pain.

How could she have forgotten about it? The pain made her remember where she was.

It snaked through her limbs, grasped the side of her face like an open flame. Her body began to shudder, and there was no stopping it. She couldn't move an inch but her body was doing it for her. The pain possessed it, and Nellie could only count.

Up to five hundred, and down again, until one wave stopped and another rose and fell. Like the sea. Nellie didn't know why, but she remembered this. The ocean. The sea. The marvellous, marvellous sea.

And then, still in the clutches of pain and darkness, she found herself begging: "Sweeney!"

She was insistent, desperate, shameless – but still, no one came for her.

Had someone told Nellie to lap the sewage in the street, she would have done it. Anything to stop what lurched inside. The burning that consumed her.

_I dunno who I am, _she suddenly realised. _I dunno where I am!_

"Help me!" Her lips quivered, but now no sound escaped Nellie's throat.

There was something wrong, but the darkness clouded everything.

She was left with two names: Sweeney, and Nellie.

And the pain.

"Lord 'elp me!" Nellie knew she must be mute. But she could still shriek in her head. _I'm dying!_

But she wasn't.

Nellie managed to wiggle, inch by inch, to the edge of her bed. It was worse than lying still. As far as she knew, the pain had always been her master.

It took a desperate struggle that seemed to Nellie to take hours, but she finally did it.

She toppled forward. In less than a second, she clattered to the floor.

The sound was thunder in her ears. It must wake someone, Nellie thought desperately. _It must!_ Underneath her, Nellie felt the delicious shock of cold floorboards against her neck. The side of her face also trembled. But the rest of her body remained senseless. It could not feel the cold.

Footsteps echoed somewhere deep in the darkness. Voices awoke. Nellie prayed, and suddenly a candle flooded shadows beneath the door.

She was in a room of some sort, Nellie guessed, doing her best to focus on the light. A room with a bed and cold floorboards...

The door opened, and a petrified woman burst in holding the wondrous candle. "You silly thing!" she shrieked.

An older, greying woman followed behind. They did their best to lift Nellie gently back onto the bed. To Nellie, they might as well have stuck pins in her flesh. Every contact made with her flesh burnt her, as if they'd placed her on a giant bonfire and expected her to sleep there.

"Please," Nellie tried again. Her lips barely mouthed the word.

"It looks like she's in pain ma'am," said the younger woman, seated closest to Nellie.

The grey-haired woman shook her head and began to fiddle with something on Nellie's legs. "Ah child, she's always in pain!"

The younger woman set a small basin of water on Nellie's night table, picked up a washcloth, and wrung it carefully. She dabbed her patient's face, and did her best to smile.

Nellie could not return it. Every time the woman touched her legs Nellie's face contorted and shrunk into spasms of pain. Opening her mouth did nothing: she could not form the words.

"Yes but she really looks it. I think she's tryin' to tell us somethin'. Maybe we should get Mr Turpin?"

_Turpin? Who's he? _Another mystery Nellie had to solve.

The older woman looked up sharply at her assistant. She gave a good tug and Nellie's body went into another fit. "Child, that won't be helpin' no one, 'specially not this poor woman. She's suffered enough. Don't you think she deserves some rest?"

And with that, they picked up the basin, and left the room.

Nellie watched sadly as the candle disappeared. How could she rest when her body was torturing her? How could she, when her mind was obsessed with a ghost?

A ghost without a face. A ghost named Sweeney.

* * *

**If you Lovett, review it!**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I'd better say this now in case I offend someone: this writer doesn't believe/endorse anything Judge Turpin might say/do. He's a pervert, so if you have a problem with that, blame him, not me. =D And MASSIVE thanks for the favs/reviews/alerts! **

**~The Judge~**

Judge Turpin was restless."What news?"

He sat close by the window in his brown velvet chair.

The small breakfast table was lined richly with velvet, fresh flowers and bright china plates. He was preparing the house for _her. _For when she woke.

The Judge pursed his lips, holding back a smile. It pleased him to think of the day when they would breakfast together.

She would smile, and thank him. She would be grateful, he was sure. So grateful. It would take time, Turpin reasoned. Perhaps a _little_ time to adjust. But she would warm up to him very quickly.

As it stood now, he couldn't bear to touch her. But she would heal. He had the very best doctors working on her. And when she was beautiful again – which she _would_ be – she would share his bed.

"Sir?" Mary stood at the far end of the room, carrying a large silver tray.

Turpin nodded.

She swooped forward, delivered the tray and stepped back.

Turpin lifted the lid on the cream, jam and milk. He sniffed them carefully. "The milk appears to be sour, Mary," he droned, looking up at her with raised brows.

Thank God she wasn't attractive, Turpin thought, for the need was in him this morning, stronger than ever.

"What news?" he repeated, glancing down at the street below. A woman in a large red dress was out walking with her husband.

"Well, sir," began Mary. How was she to break it to him? "She's in a bad way –"

"I know," he said, impatient. "I was present at the scene, if I recall correctly."

And he didn't want to recall. But he could.

It had been Turpin who'd found her first. Smoking and charred, like a piece of burnt pie. The police hadn't stopped him. He _owned _the police. It was the first thing he'd done, after the beadle had freed him. After they were sure that demon-barber had fled the scene.

"_Best leave it to the police, sir," the Beadle had said, bandaging the Judge's bloody legs. The Beadle was also wounded. A large purple bruise covered his entire forhead._

"_You forget, Beadle. I _am_ the police." And the Judge had pushed past him, down into that stinking bakehouse. He didn't know what he'd expect to find. But what he did find...._

"_Sure ain't pretty, is it sir?" the Beadle had put in, descending the stairs after him._

"_Quiet, fool." Turpin wasn't a caring man, but the minute he saw the burnt body on the floor – he knew who it was. _

_It was Sweeney Todd's partner in crime….Mrs…Lovett? Mrs Lovett. The one who'd bowed low to him. Smiled seductively. The Baker._

_Turpin could only guess it was her. _

_Half of her was a black, charred piece of meat. The other part – one side of her body, and half of her face, was left unharmed. Her head was black and bald. _

_The part of her face that was clean - her left half: nose, lips, left eye - were beautiful. She could have been a child, sleeping. Snow White in her glass coffin. Sleeping Beauty in her castle. _

_But for the burnt blanket of black skin that covered her body. _

_It was a horrid sight, to see half a human being. _

_Turpin rushed over, forgetting his bandaged legs. He didn't know why he shouldn't just step over her body. Leave her there. But he didn't._

_She was lying in a pool of blood. It didn't take long to figure out it wasn't her blood._

_What was worse, Turpin discovered. He pressed his ear close to her lips. Heard her ragged little breaths. _

_She was still alive._

"_Best leave her, sir," the Beadle put in coarsely. "She tried to kill me," he added, still rubbing the spot where Mrs Lovett had clobbered him with her rolling pin. "It's a good thing I managed to wake up an' rescue you in time, or you would be under Mr Todd's razor by now, and sleepin' with the rest of them –"_

"_Be quiet!" Turpin had wasted no more time. He couldn't explain to himself what he was doing. _

_This woman was finished. Or soon to be finished. Half of her was burnt. Even _if _he could_ _save her, who would want such a thing to live?_

_But he picked her up nonetheless. _

_She didn't cry out. She was still unconscious. The Judge was as tender as a heartless man could be. Her flesh was still warm. It scorched in his arms. _

_Turpin could _smell_ the burnt flesh, but he didn't drop her._

"_Where are you takin' her, then?"_

"_Home, beadle. Prepare the coach!"_

_The beadle scrambled off as fast as his fat legs would take him. _

_The Judge took one sweeping look back into the hellish pits of the bakehouse. _

_Another woman, her neck slashed, lay spread-eagled on the floor. But he didn't bother with her. _

_Turpin propped Mrs Lovett's head against his chest, and carried her up toward the light._

_* * *_

"Sir?"

The Judge remained motionless, staring out the window.

Mary tried again. "_Sir!"_

He turned and looked at her. "Well? How is she?"

"She – she can't for the life of her remember who she is!"

"I see." Turpin kept his liquid gaze on the maid. "Does she – _know _me?"

Silence. Slowly, Mary shook her head. "No, sir."

Turpin sighed. He wasn't going to make any progress today, not unless –

"Very well," he snapped. "Fetch the Beadle."

Mary bowed and very nearly fled the room.

"Mary."

"Yes, sir?"

Turpin couldn't understand why she was so frightened. She was in no danger of him doing anything untoward with _her. _

"Ensure that you keep yourself tidy. I can still see that unruly hair."

Mary blushed, and quickly stuffed her loose blonde locks under her cap. "Very good sir."

And then she was gone.

* * *

It wasn't the hair that bothered Turpin. It was the _colour. _

Ever since Joanna had run off with that awful sailor, Turpin couldn't stand blonde-haired women. Just the sight of a woman in the street with golden-spun locks was enough to make him violently ill. _Joanna. _The childish wench. He took a long sip from his tea. He hoped she and her mother would rot in hell. Both had disappointed him. _Intensely._

"Sir." It was the Beadle, grinning hopefully on the threshold.

"Does no one _knock _before entering?" The Judge frowned. The man had food stains down his best again. And the _stench. _He stunk like a veritable sewer. Everything about this man repulsed him – which was exactly why he tolerated him.

"Me humblest apologies, sir. I thought you was –"

"Never mind. We have business today, Beadle. I plan to pay my patient a visit."

The beadle's eyes bulged, but he was wise enough to stay quiet.

"Therefore I _must_ know – what is her name?"

"Thought you knew, sir. Mrs Lovett's her name, and she made them pies out of people with that foul, unscrupulous Mr Todd."

"Very astute, Beadle," the Judge glowered. "I was referring to her _Christian _name."

"Oh. That," he smirked. "The nurses say she calls 'erself Nellie. If you as me, sir, it sounds like a cow's name – "

"I did not ask you." The Judge gripped the chair. He did not raise his voice, but the Beadle could tell he'd crossed the line.

"Fetch me Celeste." Turpin no longer had an appetite for breakfast.

The Beadle hesitated.

"Fetch me her!"

And his servant tipped his hat, and was gone.

Turpin wasn't the sort of man to turn over chairs and tables when he was angry. Instead, he began to pace the room. He went to the window. So many sinners, walking the streets below. When he found that Barber – Sweeney Todd – he would have him hung before the whole of London. And once the executioner was done with him, Turpin would have the demon's head on display on his mantelpiece.

"Nellie," he spoke absently. The Beadle deserved a flogging. Nellie wasn't a cow's name. It was a child's name. An innocent's. And though the woman had surely been no innocent – no woman deserved what Sweeney had done to her. Especially one so _pretty_ as her.

Turpin took the miniature portrait out of his vest. It was the only picture he had of her. The Beadle had salvaged it from the pie shop. For a brief moment, Turpin wondered if she could ever be restored to the beauty she was there. His fingers lingered briefly over the mischievous eyes and wild curls. Poor, poor Nellie.

"Sir." It was Celeste. She bowed low, displaying her décolletage. She was impeccably dressed, as always. She was exactly what Victorian men loved in a woman – tiny-waisted, pale and doll-faced. But as the Judge passed his critical eye over her, he found something lacking.

"How can I help you today, sir?" Celeste minced over to the breakfast table and sat by his chair. Slowly, she began to kiss his knees. He let her gloved hands work her way up his thighs – but there was nothing.

"Forgive me, my dear, but I've changed my mind." Turpin left Celeste sitting on the floor, went to his wash basin, and began to shave.

"It's a woman, isn't it," Celeste accused sourly. "It's always a woman."

"Am I decent?" he asked Celeste at last, when he'd finished shaving. Ever since his close shave with Sweeney, Judge Turpin wouldn't let another man near his throat.

"As decent as you'll ever be," Celeste pouted, wondering what on earth had gotten into him. It was only the second time he'd refused her – the first had been when a woman called Lucy had done a number and tried to top herself with a bottle of arsenic. Usually, they'd go for an hour straight, an' he'd always pay her a compliment after – but not today.

"Yeah, you look presentable," she conceded. She didn't have the courage to tell him his entire wardrobe was about two decades out of date and could use a good dusting. "Who you so eager to see? The Queen?"

The Judge brushed her off. He opened the door.

The Beadle got up hastily. He'd been eavesdropping. Again.

Turpin curled his lip in disgust. "Take me to her," he commanded. "Take me to Nellie."

*** * ***

**To me, the Judge isn't evil. A pervert yes, but he's still human. Same goes for Sweeney. Kinda messes with your head. o_O**


	4. Caged Bird

**A/n: Hey all my Sweeney readers! Sorry if this chappie seems a bit FANDANGLED (rushed/slapped together) That's my word for the day lol. But according to it also means: "To do eveything *but* have sex with some one, normally during a night of drunken passion whereby the act is practically impossible." I guess that kind of fits the Judge's sick thinking, right? Anyway, some of you asked _how_ it's possible for Nellie to have survived being chucked in the oven. Answer: I don't really know. You're just going to have to trust me, and believe that Nellie somehow survived. After all, we all believed in the tooth fairy once, didn't we? =D Ready for another chapter of sick, twistedness? Here we go!**

"_Pretty women_," Judge Turpin hummed on his way to visit his patient. It was a nice, overcast day in London. Now that he'd sentenced three men to the gallows, his mood had improved considerably, and _by god_, he was going to enjoy himself today.

To say that Judge Turpin was a perverted monster was a slight understatement. To call him a generous, benevolent sort of man would be an outright lie – but, as all perverts will swear, Judge Turpin swore under the eyes of God that he was a decent man.

He had, after all, saved a woman from certain death. He had the whole of London out looking for that killer, the scoundrel Mr Todd.

"Buh-ba-da-dum, da-dah-dum…"

It didn't even enter his head that keeping a woman locked up in the basement of your house was a criminal offence. He _was_ the law, after all.

"Ah, _pretty women_," he sang, feeling a spring in his step as he descended down the stairs.

* * *

Eleanor Lovett couldn't speak. She didn't even know her name. But she could smell fear. _Sweeney! _

Her large, unburnt eye swivelled over to the woman nursing her.

"There, there, miss," said the young maid, Mary. "All will be right, you'll see. You need your rest, that's all." Of course, Mary was lying through her teeth. There was no hope for this woman. Any fool could see _that. _She gathered up the filthy, blood-soaked gauzes and tossed them into a wicker basket.

Yes, Nellie could smell the fear.

Mary went around the corners of her bed, tucking them in, smoothing them down. But she wouldn't move a step closer to that bed. That _thing_ lying there in the bed wasn't human.

Mary was young, but she certainly wasn't stupid. It was common knowledge that the great Judge Turpin was a pervert, but _this _– _this _was a new low, even for _him. _How could he do that to a human being? Keep her locked up here, day after day?

"How's she doing?"

Mary turned. "Bertha," she said, rushing over to the older maid, "I give up. Just look at her! What's the _point? _She's just going to die anyway."

Nellie heard them clearly. Clear as the church bells that pealed outside the window each day. _She's just going to die anyway. _Nellie barely knew who she was, but it still stung.

"Hush!"

They both looked at Nellie guiltily. But neither of them supposed she could _hear_ them. To them, she was a broken little twig about to crumble into ash.

Bertha all but pushed Mary out the door. "We ain't being paid t' question. An' the Good Lord will judge who lives an' who dies. Now be off with ye! The Judge is comin' down for a visit!"

Mary gathered up the basket under her arm, and gladly disappeared.

Not more than five minutes later, the Judge appeared in the room. He was quite put out, considering he'd had to walk down two flights of stairs. He was expecting results.

The room was well hidden. Only the doctors, maids, and servants had access to that dim, pathetic quarter.

"Well?" The Judge was standing in the doorway, looking straight at the old maid. "How is she?"

"You'd best see her for yerself, sir." Bertha moved aside, and went to the curtained window. She pulled the heavy drapes across. Filthy afternoon sun spilled through. Turpin saw every inch of the battered, bandaged woman lying in the bed.

At first, Turpin thought she was asleep. Or dead. But eventually, the power of the sun somehow stirred some sort of life into her. Her head turned slowly, painfully. Her left eye swivelled, large and wounded, looking straight at him. It reminded him of the expression he'd seen on rabbits, when he'd been out hunting in the countryside. It had been a pleasure to see his hounds at that final moment tear into their flesh. But the look Nellie gave him was not a brief spasm of pain. It was true suffering.

Nellie Lovett. His burnt little bride. "Do you know who I am?" He asked, moving to her bedside.

Nellie looked at him for a long time. Turpin wondered if her brain was damaged by the fire, as well as her body. He waited her out – but the patience of powerful men will only last so long. "Do you _remember?_" He pressed.

She struggled. Her eye looked long and hard. It wasn't just blankness there, Turpin decided. She was _evaluating _him. He considered the little pale cheek, those odd lips. It was tempting to lean over and kiss her then – the Judge loved nothing better than confusion in his victims. Confusion, and helplessness.

And then, when he was about to give up and call it a night, she spoke. _"Sw.."_ she wheezed.

"There! She spoke!" Turpin looked up at Bertha, then at Nellie. He knelt close by her bedside, so that his knees rested on the dusty floorboards.

"I didn't hear nothin'," said Bertha angrily, yanking the drapes shut. It made her sick. It made them all sick, to see him come in and treat the poor woman like some circus monkey in a cage. But who would dare stop him?

"Leave us now," Turpin said coldly, reaching over to clasp one of Nellie's bandaged hands. The minute Bertha was gone, he lifted the candle over the bed, so that it spluttered over Nellie's face.

"Sw..sw…swe.." Nellie began. Who am I? Wot am I? She thought. All Nellie knew was the days and nights. They came every two hours. Feed, change, wash, talk. Feed, change, wash.

But this man. She'd never seen the likes of him before. He was _new_.

"Go on," the man encouraged, rubbing her bandaged hand.

Nellie stared at him feverishly. He was greying, fifty or sixtyish, she supposed. Tall, with a long, hook nose. Slightly dishevelled, and intense.

But the first thing she noticed were his eyes. They were light and yet dark, and never blinked. They were always _on_ her. She couldn't fathom why.

He wasn't a handsome man, but compared to all the other faces that had come and gone over the past weeks, _this_ was the face that Nellie seized on. Yes, she realised. _This_ was the ghost she'd been hunting for. _This _was Sweeney!

"Sw-sweeney?"

Suddenly the man's face twisted into a disapproving sneer. "No. Think _again,_ madam."

Nellie was done with names. How could she tell him _his _name, when she didn't know hers?

"P-p-pl…" That large, well-cared for hand pinned down her own bandaged hand. It _hurt._ But she couldn't even beg him to move it.

"_Try_, madam," he implored, his stern face crumpling. "_Look_ upon this face. Is it not at all familiar?"

The pressure on her hand increased. The bandages were fresh, newly wrapped. The Judge didn't seem to notice the pain shooting through her.

Nellie rolled her eyes downward, and watched as the red stickiness oozed onto the white gauze.

_Leave me be, _she shrieked silently, wishing the man called Sweeney would break up the nightmare. _Leave me be!_

"Am I not familiar?" he repeated.

He _did_ look familiar. Nellie bit her lip. Even _that _hurt. Slowly, she moved her head slightly.

No. She didn't remember.

"How ironic," the Judge said coldly, dropping her hand and getting up from the floor. "How ironic it is, that you remember _his_ name. Of all people. And yet you forget _mine."_

Nellie shut her eyes, wanting to blink out this nightmare. _Go away, go away!_

"Well, my dear," said the Judge loudly, "since your memory lapses, I will _tell_ you. I am _the _Judge Turpin, and _you_, my dear, are being kept alive by _me_."

Nellie reeled. Turpin. It reminded her of turpentine, that disgusting, strong-smelling oil.

The Judge watched her face contort and wither. Yes, he saw, smirking suddenly. She remembered.

At first the name meant nothing to her. And then she saw him _smirk. _She had seen that smirk before. And then it came back to her. Strange images. Pies, blood, revenge, Lucy, pies, blood, smack, Sweeney, blood, pies, fingers, toes, Joanna, pies, blood, Sweeney, get-the-bloody-Judge –

And then Nellie seized on one memory. The one memory that refused to go away.

_She was standing next to someone – a man. But the man that had stood before her, the one looking at her, had been the Judge._

_She'd smiled knowingly at him, giving a slight, provocative curtsey. _

"_Sir," the Judge had said to the man next to her, frowning distastefully at Nellie, "there are far more pressing matters than pies." _

_But he'd looked at her again as she'd left somewhere with short, ugly man. And that look, Nellie somehow knew from experience, was _lust.

"Have _fun,_ my dear," said the Judge, smiling and closing the door. He'd done his day's work. She remembered, oh _how_ she remembered.

Nellie lay there, shuddering in the dark. She _remembered._

*** * * ***

**Well, now that I've made the Judge happy....what about you? **

**I know I shouldn't say this, but I was reminded of that creepy Austrian Fritzl guy whaever his name keeping his daughter under his house. Hmm maybe I shouldn't have said that. O_O**

**Reviews?**


	5. City on Fire

**A/N: I hope you guys have some tissues...there's some Sweenett but this isn't going to be a happy chap. Thanks to SweeneyToddRocksMySocks, XxRazorPiexX, lilNellBell, AngelofDarkness1605, Carameltoff and linalove for reviewing! Points to those who can spot the Sleepy Hollow reference!  
**

**~City on Fire~**

The city was burning. It was always burning – why couldn't they _see _it was burning?

Water, _water_, surely that'll do the trick, Nellie thought. That'll douse the fire.

"My dear," came the assured, familiar voice, "take pains not to _distress_ yourself."

It was the Judge.

Nellie knew the voice before she saw his shadow in the doorway – yet still – she couldn't remember _why_ she loathed him.

"_The fire!"_ Nellie said hoarsely. She had smelt the smoke first, and then the flame rose high and stole into her room like a foam wave above the rolling ocean.

"You mean my candle?" The Judge crossed the room and held it up distinctly for Nellie to see.

"See, _dear child_," he smirked, drawing the candle close to his face. He lowered it by the bedside and smiled. For a brief moment his face disappeared into the shadows, and Nellie was reminded of the headless horseman in the legends she'd been told as a child.

"I ain't – I ain't a child," Nellie whispered.

She watched him drop to his knees, that dusty, creaking, worn-faced Judge, and begin to laugh.

He was mocking her, Nellie realised.

"Ah but you are. You are helpless, my dear. Did you _really_ think there was a fire?"

Nellie gave the briefest of nods. She could barely move her head.

"T-take…take it _away," _she tried again, forcing her mouth to form the words. Her large eye darted to the flame by her bed side. It was completely still, but Nellie could imagine it flickering, flaring up and striking out at her like a snake.

"Take what away, child?" Turpin knew exactly what she was referring to. He was testing her. Testing to see how much she remembered.

"The fire," she breathed.

"I will do so," said the Judge sternly, "only when you _remember_."

It stunk, actually. The room stuck. It smelt of urine and unwashed flesh.

He would have to speak to the maids. Briefly, he studied the woman wrapped up in bandages.

If it weren't for her faces, she could have been one of those mummies that had become so popular of late in all the musuems. The bandages, however, were no longer white. They were black and dried in places. Red and seeping in others. Underneath, Turpin could envisage the rotting flesh.

That was what the room stank of, he realised, scrunching his nose.

Rotting flesh.

"Go away," Nellie prayed. She felt the smoke go up her nostrils, and imagined it singeing her lips, the flames prying their way into her mouth.

On the unblemished side of her face, she could sense the heat-warming against her cheek, and could only close her eyes and hope it would all fade away.

"It won't go away, _Mrs Lovett_," he droned, his voice sounding close to her ear. "I won't let it."

_One, two, buckle me shoe,_ Nellie sang in her head. Keep singin' it, keep repeatin' it, an' 'e'll leave me be ta rot an' dream –

Suddenly something rough grazed her cheek. Something odd and wet pressed against it.

Her eyes flew open, and stared into that grey, leering face. "_Don't," _she pleaded.

Turpin ignored her. "Who are you dreaming of Nellie?" he asked.

The eye twitched, and sweat glistened on her cheek.

Still, Judge Turpin would not relent. Joanna, and Lucy, her mother before her, had displayed the same fear. He would not be thwarted a _third _time.

He found himself staring at her lips again, those odd half-full lips –

"No one," she shuddered, wishing she could wipe away the foul kiss that lingered on her cheek.

"Come now, Mrs Lovett. I do not take kindly to _liars _in my house."

He didn't strike her. She was already half-dead. "Perhaps," he said getting to his feet and blowing out the candle, "you are dreaming of your Sweeney Todd."

"_Sweeney – " _Her eyes locked on the shadow of the Judge. "How d'ya know – who is 'e – "

"Don't play coy, Mrs Lovett. He will _not_ be coming to your rescue."

And the door was shut, and Nellie was plunged into the darkness again.

*** * ***

"Sweeney Todd," she whispered on her lips. _Who is he?_ Mrs Lovett. _Who is she?_ Sweeney Todd. Mrs Lovett. Mrs Lovett Mrs Lovett –

And then, as if someone had whacked Nellie over the head with her old rolling pin –

Eleanor Lovett _remembered._

It was the same night when she'd curtsied the Judge, and he'd pretended he wasn't interested.

Nellie remembered, on account of her favourite dress. She'd worn her favourite dress.

The black and white one with the frills. The one she'd scrimped and saved for and after a long night of all them noisy customers she'd just gone up them long stairs and knocked on the door and –

Sat in that big, comfy-cosy chair, the same one her Albert –

"_Mrs Lovett!" _

_Sweeney Todd was looming over her, his dark eyes crooked in the light._

"_Wot?" Nellie jumped a little, until she remembered where she was. Nice and snug in Mr T's Tonsorial Parlour. "Oh, is you Mr T. Musta dozed off."_

_Nellie propped her head up on her shoulder. Her rolling pin was sitting in her lap._

"_What are you doing here?" he asked coldly, dragging her out of the barber chair._

_Nellie stared at him, and caught her own reflection in the mirror. She wasn't a mess tonight, she decided. For once, her hair was proper curled. There was no flour as thick as London mud nesting in her hair. Her skin was clean and smooth. No pastry dough and splattered meat stained her pale chest, and there was no gritted dirt and blood under her nails –_

"_Try to pay attention, Mrs Lovett."_

"_Is awful hot down there Mr T, in th' bakehouse. I need a rest, wot's all. An since we's finshed up for the night why dun we 'ave a nice hot toddy – "_

_Before Sweeney Todd could change his mind, Mrs Lovett bustled over to Sweeney's desk where the bottle and glasses were sitting on a tray. _

_"One for you, an' one for me."_

_Sweeney accepted it without scolding her. He downed the glass, and muttered: "the Judge didn't come tonight."_

"_Oh love," Mrs Lovett soothed, putting her glass down and reaching for his arm. "The night's still young – "_

_Sweeney threw the glass across the room. But his voice remained still. "He'll never come."_

"_Love, look at me." Mrs Lovett turned his face in her hands. Those dark, bottomless eyes funnelled into hers. Bottomless like the London night. "He'll come, I promise ya."_

_Nellie let her arms lower, so that they rested on his shoulders. He did not move or brush her off, and she swayed gently next to him. _

_"Mr T," she hummed. Her hair brushed against his chin. "D'ya think I'm attractive?"_

"_I cut seven throats tonight," he murmured._

"_Splendid, Mr T. But you is avoidin' the question."_

_Sweeney Todd shuffled uncomfortably. "You're a woman. Ask another woman."_

"_An' you're a man. You 'as eyes in ya 'ead. Wot you think?" Nellie tilted her head up, so that she caught him unawares. She went on her toes, and caressed under his chin with her lips._

"_Mr T?"_

_He didn't answer. His eyes were shut, and he swayed just slightly against her. _

_Nellie felt bold. She guided his head so that it was level with hers. She met his lips, and pressed herself against them as if she were linking a necklace around her neck. _

_He didn't move, not even when she touched the top of his lips with her own, and then the bottom. _

_They were slightly chipped, Sweeney's lips, and with her caress they felt like grains of dough and flour being kneaded down. Her lips met the same spot, over, over, and drew back, taking with her drops of him like dew from bark. _

_There were no floorboards. No broken glass. No boots. No barber shop. No blood splatters and dreams of cleavers slashing down into the night –_

_Then Nellie kissed the air. He was gone. Sweeney had crossed the room and dumped himself in the chair. But to Nellie, he was flying._

_Flying far away from her, brooding with those razors like they were his children -_

"_You didn't answer me," she said, gently taking the razor from his hand and putting it back in his vest pocket._

_She knelt by the chair, by his feet, as it were an altar. Nellie waited._

"_I forgot the question," Sweeney said, and his face crumpled into something odd. _

_He didn't have blood in his thoughts then. He was staring at Mrs Lovett, wondering. How she was just like those pieces of broken glass on the floor. _

_When the shards break, something deeper bursts beneath, Sweeney thought. The flood of all things breaks through. _

_Joanna's rattle flashed through him. The tide sweeps, and we are all broken in the same unforgiving flood –_

_Mrs Lovett's hands reached up to him. Her eyes were wider than the men whose throats he'd cut and sent on their way down to hell –_

"_Please, Mr T."_

_He couldn't refuse her._

_He drew his face towards her, and stopped just near his knees. The curls and the lips were the same colour as the glow in the bakehouse below –_

_Nellie drew herself up to meet him, resting her knees on her skirts. _

_They met again, and his lips were shut like the gate to a fortress city. _

_His nose brushed hers, and when Nellie's hand pressed into the small of his back, she realised he was trembling. _

"_Relax, Mr T. It's not so hard," she whispered against his lips. _

_They fell to silence, and when she touched his mouth a second time, Nellie understood why he was trembling. She was trembling as well. _

_There was something waiting for them beyond their pressed, silent lips._

_Her hand rested beneath the nape of his neck. Sweeney's hand found the curve of her jaw. _

_There was prison and torture and hanging and madness all just outside the barber's door –_

_But together, they'd found another door._

_At last, his still, sewn lips parted like the opening to an infinite cave, and she entered __–_

"_Witch! Witch! City on fire, smoke out the witch!"_

_The door between them died, as the real door opened._

"_Witch! Witch!" It was the old woman, clutching her rags and spitting on the floor. _

_She pointed at Mrs Lovett. "Witch! Witch! Sir, we must tell the Beadle!"_

_Sweeney leapt of the chair, advancing on the woman. "Tell him what?"_

_Nellie was still on the floor among the shards of broken glass._

"_Tell him! Tell him! Tell the Beadle-deadle!" Her eyes rolled around in her head._

"_TELL HIM WHAT?!" Sweeney roared, shaking the beggar by the shoulders._

"_BEADLE!" She pointed._

_Coming just round the corner of the street was the Beadle, strolling beside the Judge._

"_Inside!" Sweeney commanded, pushing the beggar woman in the shop._

_The door slammed, and Nellie watched as he swung his razor high._

_He spilled Lucy's blood like a sacrificial lamb. Nellie wondered why she wasn't pleased._

"_Help me," he hissed, and together they moved the beggar woman onto the chair, and pulled the lever._

_They watched as she tumbled down like a bruised piece of fruit from a table. _

_Nellie looked up again, but the barber was pacing, slashing his razor wide. _

"_We'll walk down naturally," Sweeney said, as he heard the sound of the bell jangling. "You distract the beadle. Hold him till I come for you. I'll bring the Judge up here. The boy mustn't interfere."_

_Now Nellie knew why she wasn't pleased._

_Sweeney had returned_

_* * *_

**On the bright side, Nellie is getting her memory back! I have the next chapter ready, so I'll post it up soon if you guys want. Let me know how often you want me to update!**


	6. A Pie for the Beadle

**A/N: Yay! *Squeals from all your generous reviews! You've inspired me to write so here's the next chappy. This is one big Flashback, because Nellie needs it. And yes, the Beadle is a CREEP. What can I say the film has great material. =D  
**

_"Remember, Mrs Lovett," Sweeney Todd said, breathing into her ear on the way down the stairs. "_Don't _overdo it. It must seem natural."_

_"Wouldn't dream of it, love," she whispered back, staring fondly at the neck which less than a moment ago he had allowed her to embrace._

_But that was all in the past. For now._

_There were barely any lights, and when they reached the bottom of the stairs the Judge and the Beadle were waiting.  
_

_"Mr Todd," Mrs Lovett said, "how's about I give this starved gentleman a drink an' a pie, and leave you an' the Judge to attend to your business, ay?"_

_Sweeney had nodded, and their eyes met._

_It was an unspoken agreement: you deal with the judge, I'll handle the Beadle._

"_Madam," the Beadle said, interjecting with a greasy smirk, "There's been an awful stench about these parts, and they say your pie house is to blame. And I've been the one appointed ta see that it stops. I ought to do my duty…before _pleasure._" He leered suggestively at Mrs Lovett._

"_Sir," Sweeney interrupted, "no doubt you are a busy man. But Mrs Lovett would be truly indebted if you could sample one of her meat pies. After all, it has been said that you are an expert in culinary delights."_

_Mrs Lovett smiled knowingly, giving a slight, provocative curtsey. _

"_Sir," the Judge said, frowning distastefully at Mrs Lovett, "there are far more pressing matters than pies. I won't ask you again – where has the ruffian got my Joanna?"  
_

"_Right this way, sir," Sweeney had pointed, directing him up the stairs._

"_I will wait here." The Judge crossed his arms._

"_Well then, if you'll just follow me, sir," Mrs Lovett said, leading the Beadle into her shop. The door jangled behind them._

_*** * ***  
_

_The bell jangled behind them, and Nellie disappeared into the dark shop front. _

"_Mind ya feet sir," she said, bobbing her curls back at the Beadle. "Is a trifle dark."_

_The heavy, awkward frame of the Beadle trundled close behind. "Not bad at all," he grunted, watching Nellie relight the kitchen lamps._

_The baker had to lean over the bench top to reach the lamp. "Wot?" Nellie had the distinct impression he wasn't referring to the cleanliness of the kitchen. _

_Pastry dough was splattered everywhere, as was to be expected after a busy evening._

"_Nice little establishment you have, Madam, I must say." _

_Now that the lamps were burning brightly around them, Nellie could plainly see the man before her was making no attempt to hide his fascination with her chest. The Judge was most certainly a pervert, but at lest he had the decency to feign politeness. _

_The same could not be said of Beadle Bamford, who had about as much decorum as a bulldog being fed its last meal._

"_Yes," Nellie said as pleasantly as possible. "It is rather nice, at least, me an' Mr Todd thinks so."_

_She raised her eyes slowly, flicking them down just as she saw him staring. A moment later, she lifted them again, and gave a quick little smile. _

_It was a trick she'd learnt did wonders with the male customers._

"_Unfortunately, Madam," said the Beadle in between snorts of coke, "I am here on official business."_

"_Of course sir," Nellie smirked, curtseying low. "But surely," she said,, taking out a leftover batch of pies from the oven, "you can spare a bit o' pleasure first?"_

_She placed the tray before him. The residual heat from the oven had left the pies nice and hot.  
_

_The Beadle leant down, and sniffed. He didn't need much convincing. "Anything to oblige my friends and neighbours." He stressed the word friend._

_Nellie pretended to flick a hunk of dough from the bench. Really, she was watching him. Whatever the cost, she had to protect Mr Todd. _

"_I must say," the Beadle gurgled in between bites of meat and pastry, "you 'ave the gift, Mrs Lovett. These pies are the finest I've tasted, and I'm a gentleman of the world, mind you."  
_

"_Sir," Nellie gushed, leaning against the bench so that her face was level with his, "you is too gen'rous to a widow doin' 'er best ta make ends meat."  
_

"_Widow?" The Beadle quickly finished stuffing himself. Loose crumbs had lodged themselves in his hair, and the remains of meat clung to his mouth. He didn't bother to wipe them. The prospect of another meal had his eyes all hard and alert._

"_Yes sir," Nellie sighed, resting her head in her palms. "An' it gets so lonely all by meself in the bakehouse….sometimes I can 'ardly stand it." _

_She turned suddenly, placing her hands on the back of her waist so that every line and curve of the female form was on display for the Beadle._

_The Beadle might have been many things, but he hadn't survived so long serving the Judge without having rat cunning to his name. Beadle Bamford was one of those foul scavenger birds that lurked on the edge of the dead carcass after the real predators had picked it to pieces._

"_What about Mr Todd? I'm sure he could…accommodate you," he ventured cautiously, beginning to circle the bench where Mrs Lovett's back was still to him. _

_Mrs Lovett spun round and smiled. "No, I ain't the type to entice 'im," she said truthfully._

_"My, my," said the Beadle greedily, "he is a fool, madam." He slicked back his hair in a gesture of finesse.  
_

_Nellie just thought it made him look even more revolting. But she played her part. She went into the parlour, where a single lamp sat burning. It didn't take long. _

_The Beadle trailed after her, placing a filth-ridden hand on her waist. "Well madam, I think perhaps you and I could arrange something between the two of us," he grinned._

"_Wateva takes ya fancy," Mrs Lovett said placidly. "Take a seat sir."_

_She disentangled herself from his hands, and pulled out the parlour chair. The Beadle sat, and Nellie stared down at him intently. She removed the filthy hat and tossed it into the corner. _

"_Won't be a minute, sir," Nellie said in sing-song, crossing the room so that he followed every sway of her dress. "Will you promise ta close your eyes? A widow like meself gets a tad nervous undressin' in front of a gent such as yerself."_

_"Anything to oblige you, Madam," the Beadle swore, covering his eyes with his hands. He began to ramble. "If only I'd known you'd felt this way before…"_

"_Sshh! I'm almost there!" Nellie crossed the room, quieter than a cockroach. _

_She carried the spare rolling pin in her arms like a child, and when she was just over the Beadle's head, she raised it high, and whispered: "Take me sir, I'm ready."_

_The Beadle looked up, but it was too late. Nellie brought the rolling pin crashing down on his head, and after a few more solid clobbers across the head the Beadle was senseless to the world._

"_That does that," said Nellie, dropping the pin and setting about heaving the Beadle underneath the covers of the table. She could hear thudding upstairs, and instantly Nellie thought of Mr T and what he was up to. She certainly hoped he was enjoying his revenge. It was hard work, this killing business –_

_"__Mum!" It was Toby. Nosy thing. "Wot's goin' on?" He came suspiciously into the parlour.  
_

"_Nothin' dear, nothin'." Nellie jumped in front of the table. "How's about we 'ave some gin?" _

_The Beadle's feet were still poking out underneath the table. _

"_I'd like that," Toby brightened, "but first we has ta talk. I been thinking, ya see," he said in a grown-up voice. "I dun think it's safe."  
_

"_Wot's not safe?" Nellie said innocently, dusting down her dress. She hoped there weren't any fresh blood stains lingering there._

"_Mr Todd. He ain't good for you Mum. But not to fear, not to worry," he said quickly, seeing Mrs Lovett's face contort. He began to sing: "Nothin's gonna harm you – "_

"_Yes, yes, that's all very nice dear," said Nellie, dragging the top of the table cover down to hide the feet. "But I got a lot o' work on me plate an' – "_

"'_Course!" Toby snapped his fingers. "You is dog tired, Mum. It's me time ta learn 'ow it all operates. I wanna help – "_

_And with that the boy was off racing down the bakehouse before Mrs Lovett could say Judge Turpin._

"_Curses!" Mrs Lovett tore after him. "Bloody boy. Toby!"_

_It was too late. Toby had the door wide open, and was staring open-mouthed at the body of the beggar woman lying in the middle of the bakehouse. Courtesy Sweeney Todd, of course._

"_See, Mum, I told you 'e was no good." Then it dawned. "You been helpin' 'im!" he accused._

"_Dunno wot you is on about love," Nellie tried._

"_Wot's that then?" said Toby, pointing at Lucy. "It's a dead body!"_

_Nellie went over to the beggar woman. "No it ain't."  
_

"_It's dead!" Toby shrieked, eyes darting up at her._

"_No it ain't. She's sleepin', wot's all – eeek! Die!" _

_It turned out Nellie was right. Lucy wasn't quite dead yet._

"_DIE!" Nellie screamed, kicking the woman in the shins. The hand was still around her ankle, when Sweeney appeared at the foot of the bakehouse._

"_What's going on?" he demanded._

"_Nothin'," Nellie lied, giving Lucy another swift kick. "Me an' Toby wos 'avin' a nice chat, that's all. Toby?"_

_Nellie looked around. Toby was nowhere to be seen. Little bleeder had gone off into the sewers. _

"_Where's the Beadle?" Sweeney's crow eyes darted around the bakehouse, finally landing on the beggar woman. "I told you to watch him," he snarled, advancing. _

"_No need ta watch 'im," she said boldly, smirking a little. "He's out cold in me parlour."_

_Sweeney briefly returned the smirk. "Practical, as always Mrs Lovett."_

_It was then he saw the straw blonde hair flopping out of the bonnet. "Move aside," he demanded._

_Mrs Lovett didn't question the madness in those eyes._

"_It's her," he said, softly at first, falling to his feet. Then the demon exploded. "You lied to me," he accused, starting up on his feet.  
_

"_No I never," Nellie swore, flailing backwards. Where was the person she had kissed barely moments ago? _

_Nellie stared at his mouth. The lips were now burning, stoking the fire only Sweeney could see. _

"_Liar!" he bellowed._

_After that, Nellie didn't remember any more. _

*** * ***

**The next chap is much shorter, so I might post that up this week too, if you like. Sorry to keep flooding you guys but the juices are flowing for some reason!  
**


	7. Into the Flames

**A/N: Glad you liked my last chap! I betta post this up now - it's 11:30 and I'm falling asleep over my laptop. **

"_Liar!" Sweeney Todd had bellowed._

For the life of her, Nellie Lovett couldn't be sure what had happened next.

_Wot next, wot next? _

He'd been angry. Of course, Sweeney had been angry. He might have shouted something.

_Ah!_ Now Nellie remembered.

*** * ***

_Mrs Lovett hadn't planned on saying it. But it had to be said. "Yes I lied coz I loved you," she half-sang._

_Poor, blond-drenched Sweeney. There was only poverty in his eyes. No love, Nellie briefly admitted. _

_But what did it _matter _whether he loved, when she could love enough for two of them?_

"_Come here my love," he crooned, dangling his fingers near her like bait before a fish. _

_They were blood-stained fingers, mind, but Nellie was used to blood._

_Did he mean it? Could he really mean it? _

_Nellie gulped her way through those long-recited words. "Could….we…still…be…married?"_

_He didn't answer. "Not a thing to fear, my love," Sweeney continued.  
_

_Had he heard her?_

_Nellie thought she had better do as he asked. He looked like he'd hit her if she refused._

"_Life is for the alive, my dear," he'd soothed, and coaxed her into his embrace like she was a bee working for his hive. _

"_Leave it to me," Nellie breathed, faint at the thought of Sweeney's arm around her waist, the other clutching her hand. His skin felt a little like sandpaper, and she savoured the sensation.  
_

_He needed a shave, she thought absently, and half-giggled, half-sang: _

"_By the sea Mr Todd where there's no-one nosy….where we're comfy cosy…."_

"_By the sea Mrs Lovett, by the sea," he grinned. _

_Nellie saw their two eyes were twin, dark and glittering-gleaming with thoughts that probably no two other human beings on earth would share._

_He was spinning her now, faster than one of them horses on a carousel. _

_Nelly was giddy with delusion. She sunk into him, gave herself completely to his carriage, and let herself fly around like a child spun by its parent. _

_She laughed, and those eyes laughed back at her. Those thousand year-old eyes. _

_And he was singing to her. "The history of the world, my pet."_

_His pet. His love, his love, his love. How she'd longed to hear those words again. She was his love._

_By the sea, by the sea, by the sea. "Oh Mr Todd, Oh Mr Todd…leave it to me…"_

_Nellie had been certain of one thing: they hadn't finished their dance. _

_There'd been heat, for one thing. And flames, for another. _

_A fire, Nellie supposed. There'd been a fire. _

_Flames like circus lights. Fairy-floss._

_And a voice. _

"_Madam, dear lady," it called. Very far away.  
_

_An urgent voice._

_Hands prodding her like she was driftwood on the beach._

_It wasn't Mr Todd. Mr T never called her Madam._

"_Dear lady, wake. You must attend!"_

_There was smoke. Nellie could smell it_ inside _her._

"_Mrs Lovett," the strange voice whispered, close by her ear._

_Smoke and smouldering flesh rang in the other ear.  
_

_Someone was clinging to her, bearing her up toward the light._

"_Madam, stay with me," the voice wheezed through the smoke._

_Nellie didn't want to stay. She wanted to float – float away on that carousel where Sweeney was waiting for her._

_Where he wouldn't desert her._

_* * *_

It took Nellie two hours to muster the strength, but somehow she managed to ring the bell.

Now she knew. That voice, all too familiar.

She knew who had done this to her. Turned her into one of those Pompeii statues.

Frozen under volcano ashes, unable to move an eyelid.

She found herself ringing the little silver bell by her bedside.

When she rang it, the maid on guard outside popped her head in. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Judge Turpin," Nellie croaked.

Without another word, the maid fled and returned ghost-faced with Turpin on her heels.

"Yes?"

He straightened his vest coat and smoothed his hair down carefully, but it was clear he had come running. His shoes were unlaced and the bottom of his blood-red night socks poked out.

"What is the trouble?"

It was at this exact point that Nellie realised she had some sort of power over the Judge. She couldn't tell exactly what it _was,_ but it was _power._

"I _do_ rememba," Nellie forced herself to sound strong and confident. Instead, she wanted to empty all the tonic and medicines Turpin had forced down her throat all over his shoes.

Inside, her stomach was grinding – just like the meat in the bakehouse meat grinder, and her head pounded as if it were her old bench being pounded by her rolling pin.

"I rememba me rolling pin," Mrs Lovett found herself whispering. "I baked them pies all day long."

"Good, very good," Turpin soothed falsely. He unwrapped the bandages on her left hand. The top of it was smooth egg white, but her palm was black and torn.

It was marked. She'd clung to the handle of the oven with that hand. It was the only way she could have survived, Turpin realised. He stroked the unblemished skin, and watched her shudder. "You are remembering."

She didn't care then if he killed her next for what she said. Nellie Lovett was as good as dead anyway. Even if Mr T were alive out there somewhere, who would want a woman all burnt and shrivelled up like an overcooked turnip?

"I rememba _everythin'._ Mr T should've…. cut you up good when…. 'e 'ad the chance."

The Judge flinched. It was nearly imperceptible, but Nellie's eye was on him like a crow.

"Why do you say that, _Mrs Lovett?"_

"I _know _it wos you," she hissed. Her eye flashed, darting and furious.

"Clearly, madam, you do not know of what you speak. The fire has addled your mind."

"Don't you patronize me. I ain't no _fool_." Now she was shaking. "You made me wot I am. You made me a monster." She attempted to lift her arm, but it lay uselessly by her side. _"Sweeney_," she whispered softly, craning her head slightly towards the curtained window.

The Judge followed her gaze. He couldn't guess what she was thinking of.

"You would not speak so fondly of your partner-in-crime," he said bitterly, "if you "remembered everything" that occurred to you that night."

A little twinge of doubt clung in Nellie's mind. Something about liars and being comfy-cosy but Nellie shrugged it off.

"I says I do," Nellie said quietly. "I rememba the Beadle. I belted 'im ova the 'ead, an' it felt _good._"

Her large eye was on him now, proud and glittering. The Judge shuddered imperceptibly.

"An' if I 'ad the chance, I'd 'ave popped both u an' 'im inta one o' me pies."

"Thankfully my dear," the Judge sneered, "you no longer have the _strength_ for such debased grotesquery. But perhaps in time," he continued, pressing his lips against the tips of her fingers, "you will have strength enough for _other_ activities."

He smiled, scraped his knees on the floor as he got up. The burnt hand flopped back onto the bed like a lonely leg of meat, waiting to be skinned by a cook.

"And you _will learn them_, Mrs Lovett," he finished softly.

There was nothing soft, however, in his eyes. They reminded her of a serpent's; watchful, unblinking. Unrelenting.

Nellie was in a pretty addled state. Her arms were shaking and the side of her face felt as if it were peeling off. But she could still guess what the Judge had planned for her.

"Sweeney will find me," Mrs Lovett breathed, nostrils flaring like a bolted horse.

"No, madam." Turpin's lips quirked upwards in a delightful smile. "I think you will find, he will not."

"He _will,"_ Nellie persisted.

The Judge was at the door now, his hand drawing it ajar so that light spilled across his head like streams of blood.

"You perplex me, my dear. Why would your Sweeney Todd risk his life to save _you_?"

"He'll come, he 'ates you. An' wot besides, we is partners, he an' me." Nellie was breathing very ragged now.

There was something the Judge was neglecting to tell her.

"How _charming_. Even now, you're defending him. I can't understand why." The Judge moved to shut the door.

"Why?" Nellie sensed she was sitting on the edge of some terrible truth, like a crop of land about to tumble down into the sea.

"For one very simple reason, my dear. It was _your beloved_."

"My beloved _wot?"_

"Sweeney Todd threw you into the fire," he said simply, as if he were reporting the state of the weather to her.

The door shut. Turpin's voice carried through. "_He_ has cursed you, not I."

*** * ***

**Hope it was ok...if you like it I'll post more on Tuesday/Wednesday depending on reviews. =)  
**


	8. Pretty Women Part 1

**A/n: Hiya folks! Another chappy up, as promised. This one is all Sweeney, since we haven't heard from him in a while! Plus, I think we all need a break from the Judge. I know I am. Ignore any shoddy spelling! =)  
**

Wherever Sweeney Todd lingered, the streets were severed. It didn't matter whether it was an alleyway, a crowded square, a bursting avenue – the world parted for Sweeney.

The demon barber didn't venture out much into the world of wives, children and families.

His wanted poster was all over London.

Wearing a disguise didn't help him much either. His disguise, a thick cape, and a wide hat that hid his face wasn't exactly subtle. He might as well have run down the streets shouting his name and brandishing his razors.

Consequently, Sweeney made it his business to stay off the streets. It suited him. He shouldn't have to see the happy couples striding through the marketplace, telling so and so they'd just had their third child. Sweeney cursed himself. Every time he saw a squawking, giggling babe in its mother's arms, brimming with the beginnings of life, Sweeney could only think of his razors.

Perhaps if he spilled a child's blood, he would feel satisfied. His revenge would be satiated. He wouldn't need to have the dripping rubies run through his hands anymore. He'd killed Lucy so cruelly, so thoroughly. Perhaps if he slaughtered one of those smiling cherubs – she would not be so lonely, wherever it was his poor wife had gone. She would at least have a child to play with. She might even forget all the horrors Sweeney had committed. He could not give her Joanna back – and he was not ready to die himself – not yet. Perhaps if Lucy had one of those babes, it would be enough. For now.

Yet he had hadn't done it. Sweeney had lingered in the shadows of the market place all day, watching mothers and children. But he hadn't done it.

And now he was in his filthy home. It hadn't taken much to find. He'd stolen an expensive ring and sold it for rent money.

From his foul little hovel in his run-down London apartment, Sweeney could peer down into the streets below. From the tiny, high window, he could still hear happiness. It floated up to him, like stray grass seeds blown in the wind. The woman stopping in the street below had red hair, and her child was at least five – not a babe, but still. Sweeney was reminded of Lucy and Joanna. He always would be.

The red-haired woman was laughing, chatting with a shorter woman. Sweeney could hear their voices, as well as their laughter.

"_Joseph can wait for his lunch. I told 'im I'd be 'ome by three. Now did you 'ear the news?"_

"_Ah, you mean poor old Nellie Lovett? They say it was no fire. They say 'e threw 'er in!"_

"_Yes! Terrible business, that. Still, I always says that man Todd wos no good – "_

"_It ain't all bad news, they say – "_

"_Can any o' it be good, wot's the question, Jenny?"  
_

"_They say Nellie Lovett still – "_

Sweeney left the window. He didn't want to hear anymore.

Yet if he had stayed, he would have heard the words "_still alive."_

But just the name "Nellie Lovett" set the demons marching up and down in his blood. He couldn't forget.

All the times she had smiled, prodded him, poked her head in to announce his breakfast was hot, and would he like a tot of gin with that?

And all the while she had known. Had known – and yet still had no trouble smiling. She did not care one jot that Lucy had been stumbling alone along those hard streets, clinging to anyone who would spare a second of their time. Who knew what horrible acts his wife had been forced to go through to earn a penny?

All the while, Mrs Lovett could have spoken up. But she did not. In the end, Sweeney knew that there was no other person in the world who thought like Sweeney Todd – except Mrs Lovett. They were the same demon breed.

When Sweeney had tossed the baker into the oven, he had been throwing himself in as well. His only regret was that he hadn't been able to stay and savour it.

To watch her burn.

If he closed his eyes, Sweeney could nearly imagine the smell.

Mrs Lovett, spinning like a broken chandelier toward the open furnace. He'd seen her hair catch fire, and her dress go up like one of those straw dolls that children made on Halloween. He could remember the vivid echo of her shrieks as the flames ate her up – but he hadn't stayed. Sweeney imagined it would have smelt like that burnt leg of lamb Mrs Lovett had cooked the night before he'd killed her.

"_What is this?" Sweeney had complained, spitting the meat onto his plate. He could feel the dull crunch of ash and cinder between his teeth._

"_Burnt meat, Mr Todd," Mrs Lovett had replied, dead pan. _

_She'd gotten up from the table, and dumped the charred remains in the kitchen. "I tried me best," she sighed, coming back in with her hands on her hips, her great eyes staring intently at him._

_He had an idea what she was thinking, and it wasn't dinner.  
_

"_Your best clearly isn't good enough," Sweeney had said, frowning, crossing the room to get away from those eyes. He left Toby scowling at the table._

Her best was never good enough, Sweeney thought, except when it came to skinning dead people. At that, she had been a natural. On some strange impulse, Sweeney touched the surface of his lips.

"Hullo!" someone called, and there was a knock at his apartment door.

Sweeney felt for his razor, ready for action. He was almost glad they had knocked, before he could remember what else it was Mrs Lovett had been a natural at.

"How can I help you?" Sweeney said. He kept his voice low and level, but his skin was pulsing fire. The slightest danger and he would slit their throat.

"_Please sir,_" a soft little voice stammered.

At first Sweeney was reminded of a sparrow or a robin, but the person under the wide-brim hat was clearly a woman. It, or she, was filthy, and stank more than the entire unwashed mass of bleeders in Sweeney's apartment building, but she was undoubtedly a woman.

"Please sir," she mumbled, holding up a basket filled with an assortment of useless junk, "would you buy one of me trifles?"

Her hands were smeared. The nails were ragged and stained.

"No," Sweeney snapped, certain she was no threat. She wouldn't even look at him.

"Be off with you," he cursed, and slammed the door.

Sweeny had thought that was the end of it, but apparently it wasn't. Ten minutes later, the woman was still shuffling outside his door.

"Dandy, dandy, dandylions!" the sparrow voice sang out.

"_Leave!" _Sweeney snarled, yanking the door.

"Please sir," the woman snivelled, "I got bumblebees buzzin' in me 'ead. Do you know the cure?"

Sweeney was tempted to slash her throat from ear to ear. The woman was addled.

But then she did something odd. And it saved her life.

The woman took off her hat, sat on the floor, and began to sift through the junk in her basket, just like a child. "You like bottle caps, sir?" She picked up a handful of the useless things, shaking them. "I got plenty."

"So I see," Sweeney grunted. She was a pitiful creature, half-smiling, half-drooling over her blue pinafore. She wasn't looking at him, but above him. She was some loose screw let out of Bedlam, Sweeney supposed.

He didn't kill her. He had meant to, but he didn't.

She removed her hat, and then Sweeney was certain. He couldn't kill her, for one very simple reason.

She was Lucy.

Of course, it wasn't _really_ her. But it could have been. Beneath the dirt and grime, her hair was the colour of sunny wheat, and her eyes were the same mermaid ocean blue. "What's your name?" Sweeney asked, his voice choking up.

She was playing with the bottle caps now. She wasn't unlike Lucy the beggar woman, begging for alms. "Wot's a name? I dunno. I've forgotten. Are you a priest?"

"No," said Sweeney, smirking. So, Mrs Lovett had thought she could thwart him by pretending Lucy was dead? Lucy, it seems, had come back to haunt him.

"Come here, Lucy," Sweeney said, and the beggar woman followed obediently, taking her grubby hand in his.

_"Sweetie?"_ she said.

"No," said Sweeney, grimacing at the pet name. "I am Sweeney Todd, and together my Lucy, we shall take revenge on the world. Starting with the Judge."

"Lucy" blinked stupidly, drooling from the corner of her mouth."_Judge,_" she repeated, like an infant learning its first words.

She wasn't pretty. If she had been once, she wasn't now. But Sweeney was glad.

"You will stay with me," he commanded, locking the door behind them. Briefly, like a flash of lightning through the tiny window, he remembered the touch of lips on his own. Lips that were not his wife's. Lips, and the parting of mouths.

But he had Lucy now. She would help him forget.

"Come here Lucy," he barked, and Lucy obeyed.

He was glad Lucy wasn't pretty. He had no use for pretty women.

*** * ***

**Awwww Sweeney's in lurrrve. Just kidding....but I couldn't help it. He needs someone to talk to, since Nellie is a bit tied up. =D  
**


	9. Pretty Women Part 2

**A/N: Sorry this is late, but I've been busy with other fics. I tried with this chap to get into the Judge's head - so apologies if you find it offensive!**

_~Pretty Women Part 2~_

"My lord," interrupted the Beadle. "Your coach awaits."

Only the Beadle was allowed into Judge Turpin's private sanctum.

The room was both lavish and gaudy, dull and dusty. No expense had been spared. It had the distinct impression of an old king's court.

It wasn't quite comfortable enough to be called a _home._

The Beadle hovered on the threshold. His master's figure cast a tall silhouette against the window.

"_My lord,"_ the Beadle repeated after some moments, twisting his fingers against the doorframe. He was eager to go to the ball. He'd been anticipating it all day. The lady he selected for his dancing partner would be lucky indeed. What delicious things he had planned for her!

Turpin remained silent, casting a critical eye over the Beadle's powdered nose. If any more powder was snuffed up there, it was liable to fall off.

"I expect there'll be lots of pretty women tonight." The Beadle smacked his lips together greedily, as if the three helpings of roast lamb followed by a long session of snorting himself into a state of drugged up oblivion in the parlour room weren't enough. _Pretty women_, thought the Beadle lustily, would be the final cherry to top such a feast.

"Ah yes. Pretty women," Turpin echoed somewhat bitterly.

The Judge considered.

The world was full of pretty women. Darting in and out of houses, shops, coffee houses. Up and down stairs. Down cobblestone streets.

Dressing for dinner. Playing cards. Singing at piano.

Drawing their skirts above their ankles in some secluded meeting place.

Some were tall, some were short. Some were shapely, slim, solid, slender. Some paled their skin, plumped their lips, primped and puffed up their hats and hair. Others made no effort at all, and hid themselves beneath canopies of fabric and veils.

Each one fascinated Judge Turpin. "I will be down in five minutes," he said coldly.

"As your lordship wishes." The Beadle could raise no objections when the Judge was in one of his moods, and disappeared tactfully.

* * *

"_Ah,"_ was all Turpin could manage.

Celeste would be there, of course. She would come in one of her glorious gowns, whisper some bawdy jokes in his ear, and disappear with him behind one of the curtains for an hour or two.

There would be food, music, dancing, masks.

Lewdness. Depravity. Seduction.

Why wasn't he excited?

Probably, Judge Turpin realised, it was all Joanna's fault.

Since Joanna had eluded him, Turpin had considered seducing the pretty dark widow who called on him every Friday for legal advice. She'd had no idea what he was thinking, as she took out her tattered legal journals, and began to ask this and that trivial question. Judge Turpin didn't care that the widow was an intelligent, sensitive, proud woman, who, had she been born a hundred years later, probably would have made a diplomat, or Judge of the Supreme Court. He was more interested in her smooth, velveteen eyebrows.

But then he had rescued Mrs Lovett – and his normal schedule of seduction went out the window.

It was normally Celeste on a Monday, the Butcher's wife on Tuesday, the local trollop on Wednesday, the barrister's mistress on Thursday, and Celeste again on Saturday. Sundays he left open for a little spontaneity.

Not so the last few weeks. He'd had to cancel all his appointments – they got in the way of visiting Nellie. One of the maids might call, and inform him Nellie was beginning to use her right hand, and then her left leg. Another day, they would report she was talking more.

Turpin had not missed a single development. He would arrive like a proud father watching his child being delivered, and nothing Nellie said or did seemed to deter him. She could have thrown a pot of boiling oil, and he still would have cooed at her.

It got to the stage where Mrs Lovett would disrupt even the little moments Turpin cherished so much. He would think of her at the oddest moments – while he was at his mirror, or delivering a life sentence in court.

_Now_, for instance, when he was meant to be going to his ball.

Turpin felt annoyed with himself. He could forget Mrs Lovett this once, couldn't he?

He was usually the life of the party.

Perhaps a soothing novel would calm him down before he departed?

Turpin turned to his immense bookshelf, and selected one of his personal favourites. He searched for the particular chapter, and began pouring over the debauched novel as a child devours chocolate. He began to enjoy himself. It was what he'd always imagined on his wedding night with Joanna. He flipped a few pages.

The girl was almost completely won over – when Nellie's pale, smirking face rose up in front of the pages like one of those ghostly streetwalkers he'd pick out from time to time on the streets.

Turpin tried, and failed. He couldn't ignore that face. He stopped mentally tracing his hands over some poor virgin's torso – and sat up.

What was Nellie thinking of, this hour? Was she dreaming? Could she sleep?

He doubted it. He hadn't slept a wink, when he found out his precious Joanna had left him.

The barber had betrayed her. Thrown his partner into the flames.

She could not be sleeping. He felt certain of _that._

Turpin snapped the book shut, ran his fingers down the dusty length of his shelves, and carefully slid it back into the empty slot.

It reminded him of a familiar action, and he turned back to the window to consider.

He felt the crude awakening within, and he didn't struggle against it. Turpin wasn't the sort of man to be denied. He wanted her, of course.

Otherwise he wouldn't have her locked up like a heretic in a dungeon. But he didn't want that burnt, charcoaled thing_._

He wanted Mrs Lovett: bowing seductively by her shop door, corkscrew locks bobbing, her wide fish-eyes smirking at him, half her mouth turned up in half-serious suggestion.

It had all been so quick. But the moment between them had lingered.

The Judge remembered other little times when he'd passed through her neighbourhood.

* * *

_He'd be walking home from work, and there she'd be each day at 4:30pm precisely, preparing the pie shop for its evening rush._

_Wiping the occasional window. Putting out the sign. Scrubbing down the benches. _

_He'd noticed her, naturally. All the men did. Nellie Lovett had her own unique style, adding frills and lace and splashes of odd colour and sparkle here and there. _

_And she carried herself well – well enough so that any passerby didn't really need to imagine what she was capable of in private quarters._

_Naturally, everyone assumed that she was having it off with the barber upstairs._

_Who would think otherwise, from the suggestive snake of her waist, and the way she held the trays of pies in her arms as if she were an artist's model half-undressed?_

"_Evening sir," she'd beam at Turpin, tracking him down the street with those fascinating eyes. Then she'd smile, putting a gloved hand against her hip. Just watching him._

_ Turpin wondered what her teeth were like beneath the closed lips._

"_Care for a pie?"_

"_Perhaps another time, madam," he'd replied curtly, his eyes still trained on her lips._

_He'd been tempted so many times. It wouldn't have been particularly difficult either, Turpin gathered. The woman was half in love with him. She'd have agreed to whatever he suggested.  
_

_But he had promised himself to Joanna. _

_The girl didn't know it yet, but she was soon to be his bride. The deprived child would no longer feel the need to sit and pine for foolish sailors. She would have a man of culture to fulfil her. _

_Turpin knew well his weakness for pretty women. He desired the baker, as he desired all pretty women. _

_But he had _promised_ – Joanna was a rosebud, and deserved to be treated as such._

_He couldn't be having it off with the baker, if he was to be married to –_

_* * *  
_

"Joanna," Turpin snarled, jerking the curtains across the window. Lucy too, in her own way, had betrayed him. She was too weak for this world. Perhaps all pretty women were.

But then Mrs Lovett – perhaps _she_ would be made of stronger stuff.

"Pretty women will drive me mad," Turpin muttered, taking his white beaked mask from his bed and heading out the door.

He would forget Joanna. He would forget Lucy. He would forgot Nellie – for now.

Judge Turpin was going to the ball.

*** * ***

**Wooh! Turpin's leaving all the drama at home and about to Live It Up! LOL. Next chapter: What's Mrs Lovett going to do, now that Turpin's out for the night? Can you guess?**


	10. Pretty Women Part 3

**A/N: Hey all! I'm back after a two week hiatus! Many of your sharp cookies have suggested Mrs Lovett is going to escape….and she is, in a manner of speaking…**

**Thanks to MireiLovett1846, AngelofDarkness1605, Scarlett Masquerade, CaptainKrueger, XxRazorPiexX, SweeneyToddRocksMySocks, Lovatrix =)  
**

**WARNING: DEPRESSION AHEAD!!!  
**

**~Pretty Women Part 3~**

"Mrs Lovett, don't you fret little poppet. Time for your bath, you know."

Nellie Lovett didn't respond. They only called her poppet because they knew she was going to die.

Eventually. Like the week old sacks of potato skins she'd tossed out in the street after making Mr Todd's potato pies every Friday afternoon.

She was slowly rotting and shrivelling.

"Come on poppet, don't pout."

They might have been mocking her, if the two women hadn't stood there in their stained aprons, wrung hands and taut faces.

She was on the brink. There was no more time. She could not linger.

Her eyes itched and her hands burned and even in the darkness, she knew how foul she must look to human eyes.

Eleanor Lovett wasn't a person. And would never be a woman. Mr T had seen to that.

A bloody wonder. A boil. A blistering fiend. _That's_ what he thought of her.

He'd thrown her in! Thrown her, tossed her, hurtled her in, just as if she'd been a useless sack, a –

Nellie couldn't find the words.

She'd loved that man. She knew she'd loved him, because no other woman, not even Lucy, could have endured what _she_ had endured.

All for the love of him.

But it wasn't enough. It was _never_ enough. Sweeney was always wanting more. More blood, more gore, more victims galore.

She'd been daft. So flamin' daft. To think a few kisses, a few caresses, had meant anything to a monster such as him. To think he could really feel as she felt. The great stone oaf.

A kiss was nothin' to Sweeney Todd. He'd was probly fantasisin' about that bain-addled Lucy the whole time.

Until a few hours ago, it was the Kiss that had kept Mrs Lovett alive.

She'd been drawing on it, dreaming of it, calling it up in her most unhappy hours. Knowing that Mr Todd had kissed her, that he had given himself to her, _willingly,_ well, it made all the horrible things the Judge had said and done – it made it a little bearable.

It even made her almost forget how right ugly she'd become.

Not now.

She was foul-looking. Sweeney Todd had seen to that.

As greasy and festering as one of her pies she was. Mr T had seen to it. He'd seen to it, seen to it, seen to it, seen to it, seen –

"Nellie dear, don't you go being difficult now poppet. It's time for you bath," they repeated, as if she were one of those mad woman locked up in Bedlam dribbling saliva and cutting off the lobes of her ears, instead of a poor flesh and blood woman mutilated by the only man she'd ever loved.

Nellie Lovett. She'd wanted her bath, of course, she did. If she got near the water, she would be safe from Mr T. Away from the memories.

Mr T and his burning devil eyes.

"How 'bout that bath then, poppet?"

"Hurry up," Nellie croaked, turning that single eye towards the shuddering women.

How many times had they undressed her, washed her, wiped her down, and still, they could not bear the sight of her?

"You is eager today, Mrs Nellie," stammered the maid.

"Nellie," she insisted, lifting a shaking hand out to the woman.

Together, the two maids lifted Nellie above the bed and bore her out the room and down the hall to the bathroom as if it were her funeral and they were bearing her body out to its flaming pyre.

Not at all the way she had imagined she would go.

"_Mr T," Nellie had whispered one afternoon when Sweeney had downed one two many glasses of gin. "How you gonna go?"_

"_Wot, my pet?"_

_They were on the lounge, devouring thick slabs of Nellie's fruitcake and five tots of gin each between them. _

_It was a rare, miracle treat, for Mr T never stopped to eat or drink or rest for anyone except that Nellie had cornered him and he'd been too exhausted to refuse. _

"_How you wanna go?" she repeated. _

_Mr T had blinked at her, clearly baffled._

"_You know love, when Angel Death comes for a visit?"_

_He answered almost immediately. Nellie was surprised because she was sure Mr T was too drunk to hear her._

"_Down under the waves, Mrs Lovett. Far, far down, where not a soul can hear me."_

"_Well that might be problematic, love." She was half-smiling, half- mourning. She was caught adrift in the barber's spell, and could not have dreamed what smoking horrors awaited her a week hence. _

_When Nellie reached for another slice of cake, he held the plate aloft above her head, suddenly serious, and sober. Not that he was never not serious, neither. _

"_Why?' he demanded._

"_Oh love, I wasn't mocking you," she replied wistfully, sliding as close as discreetly possible toward Sweeney. Nellie was wondering how it would be if she bit onto the end of Mr T's cake the next time he took a bite. Would he be shocked, at her daring? Would he rise up in fury, and toss the plate aside? Would the whole sad lovely moment be ruined? Nellie decided she didn't care. The next time he took a bite of cake, she would make her move. _

_Nothing, however, escaped the notice of Sweeney Todd. _

"_I don't follow, Mrs Lovett." He slid a little further away, still holding the plate above her messy patch of hair._

"_I only meant I think it's a fine idea. I won't let ya do it unless I can come wif ya. I dun wanna end up one o' 'em gin-filled whores lyin' on the streets, Mr T. I wanna share everythin' wif ya, I wanna – "_

"_I don't know if death works that way," Sweeney smirked._

_Her eyes were half-shut like one of those stray dogs roasting themselves in the midday sun._

"_I don't care" she protested, falling across the coach so her head leant into his shoulder. "I wanna go wif y, when an' if the time should come. I can't be your Lucy, love, but I can be a friend through that wicked night. Please, love. I don't care when. Say it now, if you like, an' I'll follow ya. When you can go down to the sand, an' let the foam prune our toes, an' I'll take yah an an' we'll close our eyes and let the waves drag us down – "_

"_A splendid idea, Mrs Lovett," said Sweeney Todd giving her a genuine little smile. _

_Nellie thought: how alike they were, at times! _

"_Do ya promise, Mr T?"  
_

_She looked like a mouse then, longing for the little scraps of crumbs cast on the floor._

"_Of course, my pet," he said, downing another tot of gin without quite looking at her. "Anythin' you say."_

_And she'd fallen back into the broken fabric of the lounge, pretending to trace the ruined corners with her grubby hands. But really, she was studying Sweeney. She sat up._

"_Nothin's gonna 'arm you," she sang softly, putting the now empty tea tray on the floor. "Nothing's gonna 'arm you love, I swear." _

"_Mrs Lovett –"_

_She waited him out. He needed a gentle pat on the shoulder. But it wasn't enough, not hardly enough for Eleanor Lovett, whose moments of tender and peace were too few and far between._

"_Lucy," he said after a while, and Nellie knew he wasn't there anymore, at least, his body was. But that tortured mind of his was floating somewhere between cribs and baby rattles and trips through the market when he was Benjamin and had the whole world at his fingertips._

_It was no use, she realised miserably, dusting her cracked hands down._

_He was gone for now._

_Nellie finally got up, her skirts rustling like the sound of waves as she went. She leant down, and bestowed a kiss on his chafed forehead. "Sleep easy, love," she said, disappearing out of the parlour._

_Of course she knew he wouldn't. That wasn't the point. They were so alike, she and Mr T. Neither of them slept easy. Neither of them were home. Neither of them were quite right, or would ever be quite right, in the head._

_If only he could see it. _

_Nellie went through to her mean little bedroom and undressed._

_She blew out the candle. _

*** * ***

And how far apart now, Nellie thought. How far apart he was from her now.

"Relax, poppet. No need ta shake."

The women were now lowering Nellie gently into the tub.

How far apart, how far, far apart.

But how _well_ Nellie remembered. His nose brushing hers. She'd pressed her hand into the small of her back. And he'd trembled underneath it. Right by his lips, she'd been. Whispering right into the door of his mouth. "Relax, Mr T. It's not so hard," she'd said.

What a fool. Fool, fool, fool, she'd been, to listen to herself. To dream.

"Foolish old Nellie," she giggled. She bit her lip, so that she might forget the taste of barber upon baker. As if she could forget. "It's always hard. _Always."_

The servants exchanged glances. "Is it right to leave her?"

"If the Judge were to find out – "

"I'm scarred, not dumb," Nellie spat. "Leave me alone, the both of ya. It's time I washed meself."

The women nodded. They were glad to go. Neither of them envied another disgusting job cleaning the black weeping wounds over the baker's body. "As you wish, poppet."

"You have twenty minutes, an' then we're comin' ter check."

Nellie forced her mouth into a smile.

A person could do a lot in twenty minutes.

When the left, she could hear them whispering, just beyond the door.

"But she ain't the only one, wot about the girl his ward – "

"- Kept her locked up for fifteen years, they say, till some brave sailor boy whisked her away – "

"It's madness!"

"Monsters like him should be hung – "

"Speakin' o' monsters, when you think they'll get around ta hangin' that demon – "

"Oh you mean that Sweeney Todd."

"Very devil 'e wos. Hang 'im 'igh, I say."

"Gotta set an' example – "

And then the voices simply floated away.

It was still difficult to move about. But Nellie had been saving her strength.

She had enough, just enough, to turn herself around in the water.

She was face down now, and could hear nothing but the still little spill of water in her ears.

Water down below. How lovely calm it looked, Nellie thought.

No roaring, no scorching, no flames. No mad eyes, no razors slashing high and wide.

No poor Toby beggin' Mr T to spare his life –

It wasn't even cold. At least she couldn't feel it.

Nellie closed her eyes, and smiled. Her thoughts were pleasant, as she drifted off: _Maybe I'm a long-lost mermaid, finally goin' home to meet me family under the waves – _

It was finished. It was done. Her die had been cast, and all that might have been between Nellie Lovett and Sweeney Todd would never be again.

* * *

The people of London were a creative lot.

They weren't just drowning themselves in tubs.

They were destroying themselves at balls, banquets, fancy feasts.

Some, such as Sweeney Todd, was destroying himself with his thoughts alone.

His dingy little apartment was always dark, but not tonight.

There was a special festive air, as he dressed himself up handsomely for a night among the debauched.

"Sweeney Sweeney Sweennnnneyyy!" The beggar woman had made herself at home, and was dancing around the room in a dirty gown.

Strangely, the noise did not disturb him. Not in the way Mrs Lovett's ceaseless chatter had.

"Now Lucy," he said, grinning at the filthy stringy woman clinging to his arm. "How would you like to go to a ball?"

"Ball! Sweeney d-dance?" She grinned back, revealing a mouth of stinking teeth.

"Yes, my love," Sweeney soothed, slamming the door behind them.

He had his razors at the ready.

"We will _dance."_

*** * ***

**Oh by the way...I like Lovatrix's suggestion. Whoever guesses what Sweeney's going to do next wins him for the night! =DD  
**


	11. All In Masks

**A/N: Pathetically late, I know. But I've been updating other Sweeney fics, so what can I say? I'm an addict. I'll post again this week to make up for it!**

**~All In Masks~**

_"They're havin' this ball all in masks, you see."_

Judge Turpin's masked balls. The talk of the twisted town. Home to the wicked, the depraved, the malignant. Those bored, rich folk who had nothing left to do but torture the innocent and sink themselves down deeper and deeper into the devil's pit.

"We'll get him," Sweeney muttered, feeling for the razors in his pockets. His faithful friends.

The balls were held every fortnight, at the Judge's house, or one of his rich associates. Sweeney had spent every night in the opium dens of London for an entire week, waiting for the Beadle to shop up. When he did, the barber watched, and listened. Eventually, the Beadle got high enough to begin babbling to one of the other opium induced customers, and was inviting him to come to the masked ball. This time, apparently, it wasn't at the Judge's house.

Sweeney had copied down the address, and disappeared. He was almost lucky, in a way, that Mrs Lovett had told him of the masked ball months earlier. It had served him well to pay attention, at least _some_ of the time, to the things she'd said when she was alive.

Not that the past mattered anymore.

"Come along, my pet," Sweeney cooed to the beggar-woman, guiding her past a hazy opium den, a fortune teller, and a man on the corner selling shrivelled up bits of meat that looked suspiciously like dead rats.

"Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie!"

"No Lucy," he corrected, grasping the woman's arms to stop her from slapping him again. "_Sweeney. _Say it."

"Swee-tie," the near toothless woman bellowed.

"Hush now, my dove," said the barber gently, folding her crumpled lips beneath his in a kiss that made him sick. The beggar smelt of fried cat and rotten fruit and piss. Even in the ball gown he'd purchased for her to wear, the stench of unwashed flesh was unmistakable.

Sweeney quickly loosened himself. Barely two months had passed. He could still call up the caress of the baker's lips. So cracked and needy. But she was dead to him now, and if he'd been offered the chance again, he would not have hesitated to spin and twirl and toss her higher into those glorious flames.

"Ball, Sweetie." The beggar-woman grinned, clutching and swinging onto his arm like a child.

"Yes, my love. We're going to the ball," Sweeney droned, weaving through well-dressed people on the street, and stepping over less well-dressed ones lying stone cold, probably drunk, or dead, on the pavement.

They stopped four houses away from the address. Sweeney pulled the poor broken creature into an alleyway. At certain times, the light hit her hair in the right direction, and it reminded him of how Lucy had looked when she was young.

"Wear this, my angel," the barber commanded, lifting his cloak to reveal two masks. One was narrow and grey, and cut off just below the eyes. It reminded Sweeney of a rat, or a mouse, and would suit "Lucy's" pale-pink dress.

"Monsta!" the woman screamed, when Sweeney slipped on his own mask. "Monsta killed Sweetie!"

Sweeney smiled through the mask. He _was_ a monster, of sorts.

The beggar-woman was twirling, shrinking back. The sight of the black fur, the sharp snout, and the gleaming fangs was too much for her.

"Come here Lucy," he growled playfully, snatching her into his arms. "I am a friendly wolf."

She whimpered, and eventually fell limp in his arms.

He took off the mask briefly, and her yellow eyes lit up when she saw his hollow face again.

How odd, Sweeney thought. She fears a mask, but the real demon beneath does not frighten her.

A whistle blew down the street. A policeman paraded up and down its lengths, fiercely clanging a bell. "The Demon Barber is at large! Lock your doors and keep clear of strangers! No one loiter on the streets!"

"Sweetie!" The beggar shrieked happily.

She wanted to go after the bell. Sweeney clenched her hand, and stopped her before the grey-brick house on the corner.

They had reached the address.

He knocked furiously. The policeman was less than fifty paces away, and Sweeney did not wish to answer questions.

"Welcome," gargled a short, stocky, rat-like man dressed in green velvet and a pig's mask. The giant snout protruded from his face and dripped with melted candle wax. He opened the large doors an inch and blinking suspiciously. It was none other than the Beadle himself.

He stopped blinking when he saw their costumes. "Oooh love the wolf mask, whoeva you are. Come in, hurry, things are well under way."

He ushered them in, took one look at the policeman down the road, and slammed the doors shut.

No one, it seemed, cared that two more strangers were entering into the depths of hell.

The two misfits, barber and beggar, paused by the entrance.

Before them, revelry and sin went hand in hand.

A chandelier as big as the ceiling in Mrs Lovett's pie-shop hung over the ball-room. An orchestra played continuously at the far end of the room. Even the musicians wore masks. Someone had stuck up flame-coloured canvases over all the walls. There was no real theme – simply a series of frightening faces with bulging eyes and grinning teeth, some gorging themselves with food, others laughing silently, others screaming.

To Sweeney, the faces could have been any of his dead customers, coming out of the paintings to haunt him.

"Sweetie, me dance!"

Lucy was getting excited, copying the other women and spinning awkwardly in her pink gown.

"Soon," Sweeney promised, clasping her hand so she would not run loose. He scanned the crowd.

There was only one throat he wished to spill tonight.

The sinners ran and tumbled and bellowed and laughed. Across the floor, the men lifted, twirled and tossed the women. Their dresses, wild and frilled and brilliant, went with them, spinning in maelstrom circles like whirling dervishes.

Only they were not men and women. There were crocodiles and peacocks and donkeys and tigers and goats and monkeys and gargoyles. A man in a ghoul mast whirled past them, lifting his partner, a woman in a leopard mask and dress. She laughed raucously as they passed.

Another woman glided by them wordlessly, partnerless and dressed in a white gown streaked with blood-red fabric. She turned, and looked directly at them. Her face was hidden by a pale death mask. Her red lips and dark eyes reminded him immediately of Mrs Lovett.

Beyond the swirling dancers were two long tables laden with mountains of food. Manners didn't seem to apply here. Men and women alike stuffed themselves greedily, snatching at fruit and cakes and pies and roasts as if they'd never known food.

Sweeney stared, briefly tempted by a pyramid of fresh green grapes. He'd never had fine food in all his days…not since. He fastened his mask. Demons did not require food, he reminded himself. _Blood-lust will be my sustenance._

"Come, my dove," he prodded, linking arms with the beggar woman. They strolled up and down the tables twice, but there was no sign of the Judge. Even in disguise, Sweeney was certain he could discover him.

He did not have long to search.

_There! _Sweeney's heart soared. There in the crowd, smirking and whispering intimately to his dance partner, an amber-gowned woman in a cat mask.

The Judge.

The trussed-up pervert in the garnet suit and white plague doctor's mask. It was him.

Now was his chance. Now, while the Beadle was sitting down at the feast, oblivious and gorging himself to the point of explosion.

Now was the time.

"Time to dance, my love," he crooned soothingly to the beggar-woman. He caught her in a vice-like grip, and moved steadily around the floor, as if he were steering a ship through a storm.

There was no wild abandon in Sweeney's movements. No lust or drunkenness. But there was no need.

He was the wolf among the lambs.

"Are you a werewolf?" one smiling woman asked as she and her partner spun by him in fast rotation.

Sweeney inclined his head, and growled.

The woman gave a little shriek, and moved on.

"Soon now, my sweet," Sweeney whispered in the beggar-woman's ears.

"Judge!" she squeaked back, though it was doubtful she knew what she was saying.

They danced perilously close to the Judge.

The music changed abruptly, and the mad dervish altered to a slow tempo. The sinners began to waltz.

Barber and beggar waltzed closer and closer to the man of the law. The dancers grew dangerously squashed as more partners joined on the floor.

"Now," Sweeney whispered, "do as I've told you."

They turned one time closer to the Judge. Sweeney released the woman from his arms, and Lucy went tumbling forward. She landed in one pink mess on the floor.

Predictably, Judge Turpin came to the rescue. "Really," he scolded, stopping in mid-waltz to help the woman in pink to her feet, "can't your partner keep a closer watch on you?"

Sweeney was just behind them, ready to step forward and claim his prize. He waited.

It would only take a moment. One moment, and he would have the Judge in his trap.

"S-sorry,_ sir,_" the beggar woman stammered, staring hard at the ground.

The Judge was a fool for pretty women. He liked the way the pretty pink gown gathered round her shoulders. He liked the way she hid most of her face under her hair, which under the yellow candle-light seemed almost….well, yellow. He liked that even beneath the mask, she kept her eyes downcast on the floor, much, much too afraid to meet the eminent gaze of the Law.

"No need for apologies, my lady," said the Judge tenderly, kissing the woman's gloved hand.

Fortunately, the Judge could not see the cracked, addled face beneath that mask.

"What is your name, child?"

The beggar-woman seemed to think this was hilarious. She didn't answer, but instead kept her eyes on the ground, and began to giggle.

The Judge thought it was charming.

The woman in red didn't. "Sir," she protested.

"Hold your tongue, Celeste," the Judge scolded.

"Her name is _Lucille," _said the man behind him.

The Judge span, coming face to face with wolf. Or rather, a man in a wolf mask. It was the lighting, but nevertheless, the man's sharp dark eyes unnerved him. "Ah, Lucille. What a charming name."

Of course, both men were reminded of Lucy.

"Might I steal her away for a few dances?" the Judge was busy hungrily eyeing "Lucille."

"You may do _more_ than that," said the masked man, "if I have the opportunity to dance with your charming partner in red."

Both men nodded. It was a fair exchange.

"However," Sweeney said, "Lucille is shy. She prefers some _privacy,_ if you follow, sir."

"I follow." The Judge's mouth was dry. "Where should we…"

"This way, sir," said Sweeney, taking Lucy firmly by the arm. The Judge followed them through the crowd. "In here, my dove," he said to Lucy, lifting a curtain and leading her down a dark corridor. _"Wait,"_ he commanded, and returned to the ballroom.

"Where is she?" The Judge peered through the curtain but could see nothing but darkness.

"Straight down, sir, if you'll only step inside."

The Judge drew the curtain, eager to commence.

The woman in red was coming over. "I don't agree to this –"

"Fetch us some punch," Sweeney said roughly, clutching at the razors in his pockets.

The woman shook her head, and stalked off angrily.

At the same time the woman disappeared, there was a commotion in the hall.

The doors burst open, and a messenger ran toward the Beadle stuffing himself at the table.

Words were spoken, and the Beadle nearly choked on his own bile.

"Sir!" He was running now, heaving with the weight of a three-course meal in his gut. "Sir!"

"What is it?" the Judge snapped. He was almost inside the corridor.

And Sweeney would follow, and spill his blood.

"Emergency, my lord!" The Beadle came to a stop, heavy and wheezing, as if he were about to hurl on the Judge's velvet shoes.

"Speak!"

"It's…it's the _lady, _my lord. She's taken a turn for the worst."

The Judge turned his hawk-gaze on the beadle. "The worst?"

"The worst, sir."

The Beadle fetched his coat and cane.

The Judge turned to the masked man. "I am sorry sir, but Lucille will have to wait. I have more pressing engagements. Good night."

Down the corridor, Lucy whimpered, as if she knew Sweeney were about to lose everything. Twice.

The Judge was leaving, parting the crowd and disappearing into the night.

* * *

Sweeney remembered the woman in red. Perhaps she would tell him. If not, there were other ways of extracting information. All he knew was if he could find out the name of the 'lady' who'd taken the 'turn for the worst', he could track down the Judge.

He could not wait another two weeks for a ball, and that was simple. He wanted his rivers of blood now.

Eventually, he found her drowning her sorrows by the punch.

"Lousy man," she hiccupped, staring blankly into the swirling green bowl. "Leaves me for a shrivelled up invalid."

"I gather you mean the Judge?" Sweeney interrupted.

The woman looked up. The wolf mask didn't seem to bother her. "What's it to you?"

"Ain't no secret," she hissed, tearing off her crow's mask.

"To some. I would like to know," said the wolf, baring its fangs. In the glowering candlelight, the fangs looked alive.

"Don't see why you should care to know," said the woman viciously, "you being a stranger and all, but since you asked I'll tell ya. The whole world'll know soon enough, I shouldn't wonder. Can you believe it, sir? There's talk of him _marrying _that hunchback! Marrying _it_, when I could give him all that he needs, and more, since I'm a hundred times prettier. If there's any man deserves a hanging, it's Judge Turpin."

"I couldn't agree more," said the stranger soothingly. "I couldn't imagine a more beautiful woman than yourself."

"Yeah well, lot of good it did me," the woman snorted, tossing her red curls. "He ain't marrying me. It's that Eleanor Lovett he's got his eye on!"

The stranger didn't speak for a long time. "Mrs Lovett….is dead."

"That's what you think. Ain't you hear nothing of gossip?"

"You're lying, you filthy harlot!" The wolf clutched the woman's wrists, and twisted them toward the punch bowl. He increased the pressure.

"Please sir," the woman howled.

If he pressed any further, they would have snapped as easily as bread-sticks.

"I don't lie on things like that! She _should_ be dead, after what that monster did to her, but she ain't! She lives! Are you satisfied, _sir?"_

He dropped her wrists into the punch bowl. He ran through the crowd, but saw no sign of Lucy.

At last, he found her outside, playing hop-scotch with stones in the mud.

"Come!"

She came.

"Sweetie!" she gurgled, throwing her arms about his neck.

This changed everything, thought Sweeney in the darkness.

Mrs Lovett was still alive.

*** * ***

**Uh-oh. Sweeney's not gonna like this one bit, methinks…**


	12. Decided

**A/N: Thanks to Scarlett Masquerade, CaptainKrueger, AngelofDarkness1605, linalove, md427, Martin Baker, Hayley, MireiLovett1846, and SweeneyToddRocksMySocks for your reviews!**

**~Decided~**

The gas-lamps were ablaze. The depraved were waking up to another night of hell on the streets, while the rich sat and slumbered behind their high spiked gates.

Beadle Bamford carried his master's top-hat and cane and cape as they rushed from the coach to the Judge's house.

"How ill is she?" Turpin was unused to running up flights of stairs, and had to pause a moment to catch his breath.

The Beadle, who didn't seem at all familiar with the concept of "running" and "stairs," looked as if he were about to go into cardiac arrest, or at the very least collapse. Sweat poured from every orifice, and the Beadle had no choice but to mop his face with the back of his jacket sleeve. "I cannot say, my lord." He clung to the banister, panting.

Turpin regarded him with disgust, and flung his handkerchief at him. "Get out of my way then, if you cannot be of use." He swallowed his fears, and tore up the stairs as quickly as a middle-aged man was able.

Mary, and the other maid whose name he'd forgotten were standing anxiously outside the bathroom. They prodded each other when they saw him coming.

"Why aren't you with her?" Turpin demanded. From the way they were standing….the Judge shook off his deepest fear. He'd invested too much time in his patient to have her…do that to him.

"She didn't want…" Mary fell silent.

"She _insisted _we stay out here," explained the older woman.

"Then she is alive?" Turpin stared at the servants, his eyes slithering from one to the other.

"Very much sir," they answered nervously, bowing together.

"You do realise," he said slowly, walking with mock-leisure to the bathroom door, "that if anything were to happen to her, I would have both of you hung?"

Neither woman said a word. Their faces were drained of colour, and there was no doubt in either of their minds that in matters of torture and punishment, their master was a man of his word.

*** * ***

They would be spoken to. Insolent creatures. Fortunately for the servants, Judge Turpin had shut the bathroom door behind him, or else they would have been subject to one of his withering glares.

They had left her shivering in the bath-tub. She was nude. They had not placed a towel, or a cloth over her. The least they might have attempted was to drain the bath of water.

But like the rest of London's snivelling filth, they were afraid.

"I can hear you," said Mrs Lovett eventually. Her eyes remained shut fast. Her trembling arms slipped away from the rim, and slid around her bare chest. Her legs, too, snaked in toward her body, so that she reminded him of an infant, floating in its mother's womb.

"You are cold," the Judge observed, coming to the edge of the bathtub. It was soon obvious. The woman was unappealing in the flesh, at least, the burnt half of her was. That did not explain the servants' fear. The baker was very pale, more so than usual. The Judge knew nothing of women's thoughts, that was true. But he knew death when it confronted him.

She had attempted to drown herself.

She knew.

She knew he would be away from her this night.

She had defied him.

"You can strangle me, if it makes ya feel better," she said weakly, still hugging her arms across her chest. "It's all the same ter me."

"Why?" Turpin found himself acting out of character. This woman was a half-corpse. He was turning down the glory of his masquerades, the women as beautiful as Helen of Troy – for _this._

And yet he stayed.

"Should think it plain as the nose on yer face, sir."

At last, her good eye opened, fixing itself directly on his stalwart form. Turpin had little experience with sadness, yet he felt the sorrow in that eye as surely as he felt the cold rim of bath under his hand. She wanted oblivion.

"I saved you from hell. This is how you display your gratitude?"

"I ain't alive, sir. Gratitude is for the living." She closed her eyes then. Her body was still shuddering.

Turpin wondered if she even felt the cold anymore. He squatted by the tub, and stroked the little tufts of hair left on her head. "You are very beautiful, Eleanor Lovett. Very beautiful, to me."

The baker looked at him. She didn't scream, or cause a scene. She was very quiet. Very behaved. "I loved 'im always," she said breathily. "I didn't think 'e could do it. Not to me."

"Be that as it may, madam," Turpin said, getting to his feet. "I cannot allow a repeat performance of this…"

"You can cage a bird sir but you can't make it sing."

He didn't listen, of course. They never listened. Sweeney – she wouldn't think of that blighter now, not a second more on 'im. Nellie knew the Judge wasn't listening, because he had taken a cloth from the basket in the bathroom, and was holding it across his arms. Now, what use did a man have with a cloth?

He was regarding her bare flesh again, the soft, unblemished half of her body that had escaped the flames. What sort of man would set a woman's flesh on fire? "What will make you sing?"

Her eye was stripped of all disguise. It did not wink at him, the way it had winked that night she had greeted him outside her pie shop. Now, it was blank. Butchered of dreams. "Nothin'."

"I could give you your freedom."

"Wot freedom?"

"I would let you go. Pay you enough to live comfortably the rest of your days. I would ask no more questions. I would not seek you out."

"Wot you want in return?" It was stupid asking, really. What did men always want?

He did not answer her immediately. Since his patient could not, or would not stop shivering, he decided to apply his own medicine. He lifted her out of the water. She had to cling to him, or fall on the tiles. He wrapped the towel around her naked form.

"Mary!" Turpin went to the door.

The maid opened it, and followed him down the corridor to the patient's room.

The room was not the same. It no longer contained the trapped fever it once had.

He waited until she was dressed again, and came kneeling by the bed. His face no longer looked as harsh and imperious as it once did.

"Wot you want?" Nellie repeated, when he did not answer.

"What your dear Mr Todd had before him every night, and did nothing about. Such men deserve no happiness."

Nellie Lovett hadn't imagined a time when she would find herself agreeing with a man such as Turpin, but for once, he was right. "We all decide which way our lives will play, sir, one way or the other."

"And now it is you must choose your fate," he pressed without malice. "I must now: what have you decided?"

"Do I 'ave a choice?"

*** * ***

"Go home."

Lucy was no longer interested in hop-scotch. The streets were her playground, yet she trailed after him like a stray cat.

"Sweetie?"

Sweeney turned. In the crevices of her face, he saw no woman. There were holes, gurgles, widened eyes, hands grasping for muslin and mint and all the fine things she had once known.

He took those hands and held them briefly up to the gaslight, tracing the burn marks and stains and age spots and scuffs and scars. A green bruise ran down the length of her wrist, and one of her nails had been torn or bitten in half. He wondered at how her skin was still largely intact, and yet her mind had succumbed to rot. Was there a medicine that could transform his battered wife's skin into porcelain, and remove the dumb dribble from her mouth?

"Go home, my love," he said, gentler this time. She did not understand his words. She must be taught. He paid a passing child selling apples, and dangled the green prize above the woman's greasy head. "Go home," he repeated, "and the treat is yours."

The sweet momentarily entreated her. She clutched at it, and Sweeney lifting it higher aloft only distressed her more. "Sweetie!" she yelped. The beggar sank into the mud, and began patting and pawing at his trouser leg. The pink muslin was all but soiled.

"Go home," said Sweeney firmly. "_Wait._ I will return. _Wait." _

"Wait," she repeated, looking up at Sweeney as if he were her vision of heaven. "I wait, Sweetie. Wait for Sweetie."

"Yes," he said, dropping the apple into the lap of her dress. He shook her free of his leg, and broke into long strides.

Her wails followed him the length of the street, but Sweeney was adamant. He could not live. He could not love. He could not hold his battered Lucy. Yet.

Mrs Lovett lived.

And the Judge….he would see about that very shortly.

Sweeney had his friends close by in his pocket, and that was all that mattered.

*** * ***

**Short, I know, but a girl needs her sleep. It may be silly, but I've always wondered if Sweeney slept in his barber chair, or actually had his own room. Something tells me he didn't get around to showering much either…**


	13. Purpose

**Thanks for the reviews!  
**

**~ Purpose~ **

In the manner of all brilliant cold hearted killers, Sweeney Todd had come up with an ingenious list of ways to inflict pain on Mrs Lovett.

His old partner. His confidant. And in that final month…he supposed, his friend. His only friend.

Yes, it was rare for the barber to reflect on his relationship with other people, unless it was that dark grasping past of wheeling masquerades and soft falling women and vermin Judges not worth what a pig could spit.

"Jerky, sir?" cried out a boy on the streets, barefoot and bedraggled.

"No," Sweeney rasped, stepping neatly around him and all the other beggars and misfits and no goods. His own daughter was an orphan to him – what made them think he could care for anyone else?

The Judge was his only care. Swing your light high, my friends. Swing it high. Bring the Judge to his knees. Spill his blood and smear it over windows and altars like the blood of Christ.

"How'd yer like to dab it up wiv me, sir?" A whore in a black and red ruffled dress leant against an alley wall as he stopped.

Sweeney checked his bearings. He was close now. One more black corner and he was there.

"Sir, come on now don't be cruel." The woman was following him, stroking his shoulder suggestively the way Mrs Lovett had once done. He whipped round, staring into her with the same unsparing regard a hard master gives reserves for a crippled horse before he delivers the final blow and puts the poor creature down.

"Sir?" her caked face, almost cracked, the red, dollymop lips on the verge of splitting like a burst fruit. She quivered in understanding, and her blood flowed freshly on the cobblestones. Sweeney left her body to rot face down in the alley, and set off for his final destination.

Somewhere down the lane, he could hear Mrs Lovett calling on the wind.

It was not faint. The voice whistled and wrapped itself around the soles of Sweeney's shoes.

At last the white house came in view and the barber trailed carefully the sides of its walls. He clung against the white surface until Mrs Lovett's voice was gone from his head. The only sensation left was the cold blade grasped in his pockets, and the hard back of the wall pressed against his head like the wooden bottom of a poor man's coffin. He waited until the red jackets of the guards receded into the building.

Their shift was over, and another would begin in five minutes. It didn't surprise him. Like every coward, the Judge needed armies to fight his battles

The guards' footsteps called to Sweeney as surely as a hangman trails after the weak and battered poor. He had but a moment to slip inside the Judge's house unnoticed.

Not to worry. Another silent throat slit upon the stair, and Sweeney discarded the body behind a curtain in the foyer. He slid the dead man's jacket over his shoulders like another skin. This time, he would not be foolish enough to heed a woman's advice. He would not wait. The Judge was first – Mrs Lovett he would savour last.

She too, would not escape her punishment. The barber allowed himself the briefest of smiles.

Would he dangle her head out the window, and decapitate her? Or might he pin her against the Judge's wall, and carve her crimes into the bare skin of her back? Yes, Sweeney mused delightfully, there were _many_ ways of suffering. She would regret touching him, attempting to cast her witch's spell and have him forget his Lucy. If he touched those treacherous lips again, it would not be the prelude to a kiss, but the prelude to tearing out her tongue.

* * *

"Another slice of cold turkey, my lord?" The Beadle leaned over the laden dining table, stacking his plate as high as London tower with meat and sweets.

"No," said the Judge sourly. He was not at all accustomed to "going cold turkey," as the Beadle liked to describe his current predicament. According to Bamford, his latest obsession with Mrs Lovett was some disturbed method of abstinence. "Not that you'd need to abstain sir," the Beadle had added quickly, "since you aren't about to get pregnant."

It was true – Judge Turpin had never dealt with a sick woman. He had not expected the recovery to be so lengthy – yet what could he do?

The vision of Mrs Lovett sauntering by the stairs of the barber shop stayed within him. If he pushed the heavy meal aside and shut his eyes, it was possible to imagine her cheek caressed beneath his hand, and her smirking lips pressed against his own. He cursed himself for overlooking her then, and he cursed Mr Todd for blighting such beauty.

It was the same anger that surged within him when a beautiful woman he was smitten with chose to join a convent rather than succumb to him, or when he had lost consistently to the Beadle three times in a game of chess.

"I will have him hung," Turpin promised, scraping his chair and stalking over to the window.

"Sir?" the Beadle stared only half-interested, his mouth dripping with turkey fat.

"Sweeney Todd, you fool," said the Judge, finding he could no longer stand the heady smell of the feast. Even when he left the Beadle to his piggery and wandered down the long corridors, the drowning sensation did not ebb.

He was trapped in this house – and all the ghosts of his prison had fled. Joanna, Lucy, and now it seemed Mrs Lovett too, were keen to avoid him.

Judge Turpin held the life of almost every man in London in the palm of his hand, but he was now beginning to realise there were many things he could not do.

* * *

There was an odd flicker beneath the locked door. Someone – a woman – was singing. Very lightly. Near inaudible. Yet he heard.

There was little Sweeney did not hear. He kept his razors close and strained an ear against the door.

"Soon, if I am good," the voice half-sang, "I will dance barefoot, and batter my heart. And all them flames will blow away."

Then she began to talk. "Wouldn't you like that Albert? Me poor, dead Albert."

Mrs Lovett.

Sweeney put an eye through the key-hole. A candle illuminated the dead thing sitting in the bed. He could only see the burnt half of her – but it was her.

A poor, charred, forlorn thing. Just like his Lucy.

It had been such a satisfying idea at the time. Burning her as they used to burn witches. He had relished the torture in her face as he had flung her from her his arms and into the churning fire. Had he had time, he might have carved her body up and turned her flesh in the meat grinder and made her into a pie for all the trouble she had caused him.

And yet barely a month had passed from that night in his barber shop. When he had moulded her skin into his own, swept her mouth into his and nearly allowed her to become him…

"Mr T," the woman on the bed hissed.

Sweeney leapt back from the key-hole. The corridor was empty – he pressed his eye against the hole. She was talking to herself.

It was not quite Mrs Lovett.

The bed and blankets swamped her, and her right eye was shut and melted along with the rest of her skin. Mrs Lovett had ceased talking, and now broke into peals of laughter. Her hands remained stiff and still under the blankets, yet she would not stop breaking her mouth into cracked little smiles up at the ceiling.

Until the sound of someone coming up the stairs caused her to stir and sit frozen staring at the door.

She knew who was coming.

Sweeney found a curtain at the end of the corridor and hid himself behind it well.

The Judge had just set foot on the landing, and appeared to be mopping his eyes with a handkerchief. When he had straightened himself, sucked in his stomach, cleared his throat and ran a hand through his uncombed hair, he stopped before the baker's room.

He removed the key from his waist-pocket, and unlocked the room.

"Have you arrived at your decision, Mrs Lovett?" the barber heard the Judge asked. He stepped into the room completely, humming as he went.

From behind the curtain, Sweeney was left wondering why he had lost all desire to punish Mrs Lovett.

*** * ***

**I'm so tired but I can't help being such a night owl. Just curious - _if _you are taking sides, which team are you going for? Sweenett, or Turpett? =D  
**


	14. Regret

**A/N: Sorry in advance for any shocking grammar you might encounter. I should wear my glasses, like Helena he he. Sweeney and Mrs Lovett finally meet face to face.**

**~Regret~**

There were many things reasonable men liked to do in their spare time. Go window-shopping with their wives. Gamble in the men's room. Drink themselves into healthy stupors at family gatherings. Things like that.

Sweeney Todd had once been a reasonable man.

He had done some of those past times, and frequently. He and Lucy would go to dances every second Friday. Visit her mother on Tuesdays. Frequent the market on Wednesdays. When Mondays or Thursdays could be got free, Sweeney (or rather Benjamin) would take Lucy to different little boutiques, or perhaps just gaze and wander among the flowers at the local florist when money was scarce.

It had been a fine life.

And so it would be still, if he could only get his revenge.

"Your decision, Mrs Lovett?" The Judge demanded from the depths of the room.

Sweeney listened in.

Now that the Judge was inside, the barber could creep from behind the curtain and nestle outside the door.

The singing abruptly stopped. So did the giggling.

The Judge had intruded on her solitude. The silence was splitting.

"Wot the bleedin' 'ell is wrong wif you?"

At least Mrs Lovett still had her voice. Some of her, at least, had been salvaged from the flames.

"You forget, _Madam, _whose roof you reside under. I advise you adjust your tone when addressing me."

"Why?" she spat. The raucous quality to her voice was missing, but the edge was unmistakably Mrs Lovett. "You want me more amenable-like so you can 'ave your way wif me?"

Sweeney peered in between the hinges of the door. He could see the Judge standing over her bedside – but as yet nothing untoward had occurred.

"Believe me my dear your current state is hardly enticing me toward that course of action."

"Get Out."

"I beg your pardon Madam –"

"GET THE BLEEDIN' HELL OUT!"

"How _dare_ you speak –"

Sweeney had barely noticed the candle at her bedside – until she had flung it.

The wasted woman looked more suited to the morgue, but the barber gave her credit where it was due.

The candle hit the Judge square in the chest.

Unfortunately, it did not set him alight. The flame was snuffed quite quickly.

The Judge strode for the door, tripped over the rug, and landed heavily on his stomach.

His head smacked the side of the door-frame, and he was quite still.

Not dead enough for Sweeney's liking, but still enough.

The barber took a fresh candle from the corridor, stepped over the body of the Judge, and went into the middle of the room.

*** * ***

"You have one eye, Eleanor."

When they would meet again, if they met again, _when_ they met – Nellie Lovett had envisaged many scenes that were all a variations on the same bloodcurdling scene.

She had expected thunderstorms. Door-slams. China hurled. Violence. Shouting. Accusations. Old secrets dug afresh. Confessions.

Anything but quiet.

She had not been expecting that. "One eye?"

Mrs Lovett wondered if he knew how humiliating it felt to have weeks of waking, sleeping, dreaming and half-dead oblivion reduced to one brief dismissive sentence.

But that was Sweeney Todd.

"You never call me Eleanor."

"Under the circumstances…Mrs Lovett sounds odd."

"You got that right dearie." Nellie coughed.

In the moments that passed between them there ran a gauntlet of thoughts neither dared voice or thread into the plain mode of conversation.

Sweeney could not tell her that he had seen her hair burning like a bush in the desert every hour before he drifted into sleep, or that he still heard the sound of her voice shrieking like a new-born as it fought its way from its mother's womb. He could not slip casually into a sentence how the very lively hue of the baker's eyes had faded before him. Or that in the moments he'd watched her burn, it had seemed as if he were drinking from the elixir of hell.

He had wanted more, even as her face had pleaded with him.

It was the face of Lucy, being taken under the cloak of the Judge. It was the face of Joanna, being peered and pried at through the keyholes in the poky corners of her prison. It was the face of the fallen.

And still, he had wanted to trample it down.

How was it possible for Mrs Lovett to say, for instance, that she had seen the eyes of the devil in Sweeney's face – properly, for the first time. She knew now what all those dead men had seen. She knew how it felt to die.

"Wot you want, Sweeney? Just decide you wos in the neighbourhood, an' drop by outta friendly neighbour'odd concern?"

"You're alive."

"Disappointed you, didn't I?"

Sweeney didn't say anything. He put the candle by the bedside, and headed for the door.

"Before you go, love."

Sweeney met her gaze steadily. He was now his usual, unreadable self. "Yes?"

Nellie propped herself up on the bed with an elbow, and raised what was starting to become an eyebrow again. "Why didn't you kill 'im then? That's wot you came for, wasn't it?"

She didn't think to ask him why he hadn't tried to kill her as well.

Her good eye regarded him with nothing more than cynicism, and that hard, undefinable quality of Mrs Lovett's – almost a _guardedness, _that had not been erased by the hand of the Judge. And why should it, Sweeney considered? She had been a widow for many years now. She knew death formidably, almost as well as he knew it.

She had dealt with it every day.

"He's unconscious," Sweeney explained, glancing back at Turpin on the floor. "I could not savour his death, unless…."

"He wos awake." Nellie finished.

He fell to silence.

The baker sitting on the bed was an all too vivid reminder of his unquenchable thirst to have the world bleed and burst.

Nellie knew her old partner too well to mince words. And she had not expected less. Still, there was something so unutterably cold in his manner of speaking, as if he might substitute any name in the human race with the Judge's for his object of revenge – Nellie did not know how she had not seen it him before. Oh, she had known him to be testy, grumpy, grouchy. And yes, a little dangerous. The odd time a little loopy.

But she had trusted him complicity. She knew his moods, his little quirks, his uncomplicated tastes. Nellie Lovett had counted on her womanly intuition to steer the poor lost barber in the direction she'd desired. She had always been able to control him – more or less.

Until this.

"I'll come back to bleed him, make no mistake," Sweeney promised.

"Do wot you like," the baker said, shifting her face to the wall.

"I wish…"

Nellie knew what he would say. Some feeble excuse about wishing for Lucy back and the Judge gone and all his worries to slip away. Sweeney's wishes were like thin glinting grains of flint in the dirt. Always beyond his reach.

"I don't care for ya wishes no more."

"You shouldn't be here."

"I should be dead, if that's wot you mean."

Sweeney found himself suggesting it before he knew what he was saying. And why was he asking her permission? Why didn't he just lift her up and carry her out the door?

"I have a hideout in the city –"

"I'll burn in hell before I set foot anywhere wif you."

And Nellie meant it. Not that she could even walk yet.

What could Sweeney possibly say to that? He could hardly convince the woman he'd tried to murder that she was better off living with him.

"Goodbye, Benjamin Barker," said Eleanor Lovett, before snuffing out the light.

Mr Todd was no longer a shadow. Just a ghost going out the room and down the stairs to clink chains and shake his shackles at a world that no longer listened or cared.

Even if she had it in her to forgive him, she could not do it.

Sweeney Todd did not want to be forgiven. He was an unsalvageable vial of bitter medicine shaken and stirred and left to sit bottled up indefinitely on a grim shelf in a dark, dark cabinent somewhere.

As for Benjamin Barker – heaven knows where he was.

The only thing Nellie Lovett regretted was not having kissed him all those months he and Lucy had lived above her pie shop.

He had seemed so ordinary then. Such a light-hearted man. Nellie could not fathom that all the while he had greeted her good morning and handed her the week's rent there'd lurked this Sweeney man somewhere deep in the unexplored caverns of Benjamin's mind.

Or perhaps not so very deep after all. For here he was, after all the carnage he'd caused – still dreaming of sticking his silver friends either side of Turpin's sallow neck.

If she had learned one thing at all from her good friend Sweeney – it was never forget.

Never forgive.

And really – to put it plain as a feather on a hen's arse – where had havin' regrets gotten her this far?

Wasting her years as a widow pining for the man who was never likely to return. Having the man of her dreams return, only to ignore her. Having the man of her dreams treat her with such regard, he thought nothing of watch her sizzle in the flames of her own oven.

And now.

Defaced. Disfigured. Pursued by the most notorious skirt-chaser in the whole of London.

Where would she end up next?

Sitting in alleyway somewhere, off her rocker like Lucy?

Clutching at the bars of Mr Fogg's Insane Asylum?

Nellie didn't like her chances.

"No more regrets," she promised herself, falling heavily asleep.

*** * ***

**Seems there's quite a lot of Turpett fans out there!  
**

**Thanks for the advice Hayley - of course I won't be forcing Nellie either way. It's really her decision. **

**And let's face it - she's got the choice between a serial killing psychopath or a perverted creep. =O  
**

**Speaking of creeps,**** for some reason the scene where the Beadle flicks out his cane after talking to the Judge cracks me up. **

**Poor Beadle wishes he was all class =D**


	15. Surprises

**A/N:** **Thanks to Resplendent Shadows, CaptainKrueger, ShadowoftheblackrOSe, Scarlett Masquerade, MireuiLovett1846, ncsigirl, linalove and AngelofDarkness1605 for reviewing!**** I'M FINALLY FINISHED ALL MY STUDIES FOR THIS YEAR!!!! WOOT!!! Fanfic here I come!!! Now I can update PROPERLY!! =DDDDD**

**~Surprises~  
**

It came to her a little past midnight.

_To Mrs E. Lovett._

There was no address. No sender.

Someone had slipped it under her door. She had not heard footsteps – she never did.

By the time she looked down and saw the gleaming white envelope of the letter, the messenger had long disappeared.

And she barely had the strength to get out of bed and pick it up.

"Another flamin' letter," she wheezed, pulling herself up onto her elbows and slowly easing out of bed.

Her steps were unsteady. Her arms flailed without the sturdy support of nearby chairs, desks, walls. She had to learn to walk all over again.

"Pretty soon you'll be runnin'," she convinced herself. _Strong enough to outrun the Judge, that's the aim._

Nellie could not bend her knees yet. Instead, she crawled the rest of the short distance, and clasped the letter to her nightgown.

Twenty minutes later, she was back up in bed, the letter sliced open and read.

Mrs Lovett put it on the pile with the others. Letter number _seven._

She was not worried about being discovered; the Judge was far away at some floozy's boudoir.

There was a loose space in the mattress – she would hide them there before his return.

The beadle was also out. He had ducked his head in an hour ago, given her an awful leer, and followed his master down the stairs into the coach.

Mrs Lovett had the strong sensation that if it weren't for the Judge's "protection", Beadle Bamford would have done more than sneer at her doorway at every given opportunity.

As for the Judge – he had not spoken to her since the candle-burning incident.

Altogether, she was more than a little surprised. He had not attempted to injure her or insult her. Nor had he come to her in the middle of the night to have his way with her, as she had expected.

He had simply forgotten her.

She could often hear his footsteps pacing up and down the corridors below. At times he stopped outside her door, as if he were about to turn the knob and enter, but always, the footsteps retreated. For the entire week, Nellie had seen only the two maids. They had said nothing of import, except to comment on how well she was looking.

If having her left eye close over in an incurable scar meant she was looking "well" – Nellie shuddered to think how she must have looked three months ago.

Three months.

She had been in captivity for three months. Could she recall the last time she had seen the sun?

Not that it mattered, Nellie supposed.

Even when she had technically been 'free', she had only that one special picnic in the park with Toby and Mr Todd to cherish. The only sunny summer afternoon she had been exposed to after months of working in the gloomy bakehouse quarters chopping up arms and legs and goodness knows how many other body parts. Perhaps that accounted for the reason Mrs Lovett wasn't overly distraught by the lack of air and atmosphere.

It was the Judge that had her wanting to drive needles into her flesh.

"Well Mr T," she said sternly, contemplating the letters . Nellie had grown used to talking to herself in her frequent solitude. It helped to distract her from the past.

The letter had not moved from Mrs Lovett's night desk for the past two hours.

She had memorised every word, every curve and turn and scribbled scratch of ink.

Sweeney's pen. Tortured, messy, barely decipherable – so typically his.

Until now, the former baker had never witnessed his handwriting.

Now that it lay before her, glowing guiltily beneath the candlelight, Mrs Lovett knew beyond all doubt that it belonged to him.

_Dear Eleanor, _it read:

_I had not expected that night…to find you in such a state. _

_If you have bothered to read my other letters…you will know how this has affected me. _

_Your silence has me in two minds: I believe you are ignoring me, and that you are right to ignore me. I would act the same. _

_I cannot help but wonder…if your silence speaks a far graver danger…to your health. _

_What if in between now and the last moment we spoke, he has harmed you? I am sure you are alive…I must _hope _that you are alive. _

_But a person…a woman may be alive in only one sense of the word. If he has hurt you…if he has _touched _you – I could not bear it. _

_You know it is only a matter of time before I turn his neck into a necklace of blood.  
_

_Can you understand it? I cannot fathom it. I admit. I confess it._

_I wanted to harm you that night. I wanted you to suffer more than any human being has suffered._

_I wanted you dead in the worst manner possible. And now I am concerned for your safety._

_How am I to reconcile such feelings? How am I to convince you of my sincerity, when I do not even know the reason myself? _

_Why is it that I must write letter after inane letter, when every night I stand outside your door?_

_Why is it that I cannot tell it you myself? _

_I think you know the answer._

_Sweeney._

Had Mrs Lovett being given all the time in the world, she could not have deciphered its meaning.

The sentiment – the words did not ring true. How _could _they be true? Sweeney was _not_ capable of such remorse or tenderness.

Benjamin, perhaps, but that man had died in the same fire Mrs Lovett had almost perished. _Wished _she had perished.

For half a moment she wondered if the Judge had written them as a cruel joke – but that was not possible either.

The Judge could never feign confusion or uncertainty; all that Nellie knew of him was his confidence, his seductive assurance. The Judge could not have written something so _honest._

The best she could come up with was that Sweeney had somehow found a secret passageway that connected from the basement to the hallway outside Mrs Lovett's secret room.

What else could explain it? It wasn't possible for Sweeney to slaughter one of Turpin's red guards every single evening without alerting the Judge...

"You can't write him back," Nellie told herself firmly. "If you do, you'll just give him wot 'e wants. He wants me to make him feel betta. But I won't do it. He don't deserve it."

"Mrs Lovett!"

A door slammed, and a voice rang up from the bottom of the stairs.

Beadle Bamford. The slime-ridden cock-roach infested toad.

Deliberately, Mrs Lovett did not answer. Let him think I'm asleep, she thought.

Quickly, another man entered, and his voice, though quiet, filled the hall. "I must see her."

Judge Turpin.

Nellie swallowed. She seized the letters – she could not let him search the mattress.

She burned them. The candle was hungry, and devoured the papers as a pauper swallows scraps.

"What is that smell?"

The Judge had decided she was worth talking to again.

He had lost no time bounding up the stairs, parcel under arm, unlocked the door and burst in to find her feeding the final scrap of paper to the avaricious mouth of the flame.

"What are you doing?" he asked suspiciously, half-wondering if she was planning to throw another candle at his chest.

"Nothing, sir."

By the time the Judge crossed the room, all that was left of Sweeney Todd's remorse was lumped into a neat pile of ashes beneath the candle.

What could he do? The Judge took the candle, put it on the floor, and sat on the end of her bed. If he suspected foul play, he did not voice his concerns.

"I've brought you a gift," he confessed, handing the parcel to her tentatively.

"You can't buy me sir," Nellie insisted, leaving the parcel untouched in her lap.

"Open it," Turpin insisted.

"I can't."

He looked at her damaged hands. Slowly healing, but still damaged.

"Of course," he murmured, and undid the tricky wrapping himself. Even to hold it, the Judge was spellbound. The artist had executed her likeness superbly.

"How did you manage it?" she breathed, after he had placed the miniature portrait upright in her lap. She too, was evidently impressed.

"I had your old wedding portrait salvaged from the…_scene. _I asked the artist to paint you twenty years older…and that is the result," he finished, as if he had painted it himself.

"I almost look…comely," the woman said, putting the portrait down sadly.

"You are far more than comely, my dear," the Judge intercepted, finding himself on familiar territory at last. "Even in your _current_ state, you are beautiful."

"Not wot you said last week."

"Think, Madam, from my perspective. Any woman who has just attempted to drown herself is hardly palatable."

"You can't win me with gifts," she repeated, stone-faced.

The Judge got to his feet. "Will you join me for breakfast tomorrow?"

"Why? Aren't you afraid I'll stab you with my fork?"

"As you've pointed out, my dear – it is useless to buy you. I could have you now, should I so desire. But you are not Lucy. It would be an insult to your intelligence, if I did not give you the benefit of the chase."

Mrs Lovett stared. "Wot in flamin' jesus does that mean?"

Turpin smiled. "It means, my dear, tomorrow we are going on a little excursion."

"Wot?!" Nellie sat up on the bed. "Where? Wot?"

He patted the edge of her bed, smirked and left.

Long after the Judge had locked the door and descended the stairs, Nellie watched the slow burn of the candle drown itself in its own fleshy wax.

What was happening to London's men? Sweeney Todd was writing letters-of-confession, and Judge Turpin didn't want to take advantage of a captive helpless woman.

Well, Mrs Lovett thought wryly, remembering how much strength she had required to cut the sinew and muscle and fat from the bodies of men. _Not quite _helpless.

Despite herself, the baker thought of Sweeney, and wondered how many innocent people had met his formidable friends now that the barber was unleashed on London.

*** * ***

**Hmmm is Sweeney capable of remorse? Is Judge Turpin faking it? Questions, questions, questions!**

**Sorry for the LATE update - I miss hearing from you guys!  
**


	16. Epiphany

**~Epiphany~ **

"Can you walk?"

"Not yet." It was an odd question to ask a crippled woman, Nellie thought. 'But I will," she added stubbornly, watching him suspiciously as he threw the blanket off her legs. Underneath, she was wearing nothing but her white camisole and long under-drawers over her bandages.

"You will walk in time, my dear. But not today." He contemplated her legs for a long time.

For someone who'd recently had a flaming candle hurled at his chest, Judge Turpin was more courteous and composed than ever. He was even being pleasant. It even seemed that his appearance had undergone some sort of transformation. Gone was the grizzly bristle on his cheek. His greying hair had been neatly combed down in a thick, orderly state behind his ears. And his clothes! For someone as poor as Nellie, the way a man dressed himself had never been much of a concern. Sweeney had worn the same thing day in, day out – her only trouble had been washing the blood out of his shirts, and the occasional darning of a much-abused sock.

"Pray madam, tell me what amuses you," demanded the Judge stiffly, stepping back from her bed in a manner that spoke more of his having been slighted, than any real pretence at decorum or propriety toward a woman in her undergarments.

He was clean and fresh-shaven, she'd give him that. But the frock coat of pale purple silk, embroidered in pastels; underneath, the white neck frill over the waistcoat of cream silk satin, embroidered with tulips and edged in blue silk ribbon – it was too much for the baker to bear.

Nellie burst in a small fit of laughter: he looked more like a dandy than a judge!

"Stay there my dear," said the Judge drily, knowing very well she couldn't run away. "I will be but a moment."

Nellie didn't have time to contemplate the fresh letter that had arrived early in the morning under her door.

She'd only had time to climb out of bed, grasp the letter, and crawl back. It was under her pillowcase now, and she could only hope the Judge didn't get the idea of fluffing her pillows. If Sweeney kept sending her any more letters, she'd never get her legs to recover. Of course, she hadn't mentioned to the Judge how she'd been practising sitting herself up in bed and standing up unassisted for ten minutes each day, until she collapsed in exhaustion back onto the bed.

Just as Nellie was thinking of seizing the letter and opening it, someone knocked on her door.

"It's only the maid," said the older servant, coming in with a large white bundle in her arms. "I've been ordered to dress you," she explained, holding the long garment up for the invalid's appraisal.

It was a fine white gown of Indian Muslin that fell in a tiered train all the way down the back of the dress. The entire gown was decorated with silver metal embroidery.

"Somehow I don't think me bandages will like it so much," Nellie blurted, thinking of her sores potentially seeping through onto the beautiful white fabric and creating a bloody mess.

The older woman shrugged. "No matter. Sir was very specific about it fitting you."

And it did fit.

It had been made loosely to accommodate for her bandages. Once on, it was impossible to tell, save for the burn scars on the left half of her face, that the younger woman had ever been close to resembling a mad, frankensteinian monster.

"Done you are!" The maid finished the ensemble by tying a loose white cap around Nellie's short hair to disguise any unhealed patches of skin.

"Thank you," Nellie grumbled, wishing with a sudden sick fever that she was back in her familiar bakehouse, hacking away at slices of skin and muscle.

The maid nodded. She swept out of the room, just as Judge Turpin was coming in.

"Since you are unable to walk unaided," he said, pushing the door open with the Beadle close at his heels, "this will no doubt help you."

"What is it?" Nellie said, gaping at the odd contraption.

It was a velvet-lined carnelian chair, to which were attached two thick wooden wheels.

"A wheel-chair," explained Turpin proudly, bending and stroking the arms. "It was my mother's when she lived, and now I give it to you."

"Wot if I don't want it?" she pouted, staring disdainfully at the decadent contraption. In all her life, Nellie had never had to sit still for more than a few minutes, except of course, when she happened to be dead drunk. And now those two were grooming her to be an old maid before she was forty-three.

"The Lordship wishes you have it," said the Beadle with a supercilious smile. He rolled the chair forward so that stood in line with her bed.

"How else are you to accompany me on our excursion?" added the Judge with a raised brow. His expression was one of non-negotiability.

If she were to refuse outright, Nellie realised, not only would she offend him, she would destroy any hopes of securing further freedoms for herself. Suddenly the possibilities of the wheelchair seized upon her. "This means I'm free to leave my room when I wish?" she pressed.

"Within reason," answered Turpin, dismissing the Beadle with a wave of his hand.

Nellie shuddered at the smile he gave her on the way out.

"Ordinarily," Turpin continued, lowering the seat adjustment with a black iron lever, "I would have the servants attend to you. I trust I will encounter no more incendiary projectiles?"

The baker shook her head.

"Good," he smiled, thinking how pretty she now looked in the outfit he'd given her. Not pretty in the fairy lamb-like way Johanna had been; nor the angelic sweet way he'd first seen Lucy, holding her babe amidst the flowers as if she were the Virgin Mary herself. Eleanor Lovett was not like that. In all Turpin's bible editions, the pictures of saintly women had mostly been blonde, or if they were not blonde, their faces still conveyed a completely uncomplicated sweetness, a clarity of expression, a radiance of complexion, a sanctified gaze. He could not say that about this woman. If anything, she was of the sort of creature he found cavorting in his books of "leisure" that he'd taken so much joy in terrifying that pitiful sailor boy with. He appraised her carefully. She was not pure, or pretty, even in white. Despite her small stature, thin-limbs and paleness, she was not fragile.

There was something perpetually wilful and wanton in her entire demeanour that even Sweeney Todd's fire had been unable to extinguish. When he stared, she did not turn her gaze to the floor, as a modest woman should. She did not smile or sigh prettily, but contemplated him as the women on the street were wont to do, as if calculating how many coins might be scavenged from his dead body were they to stab him dead and leave him bleeding on the street…

Yes, despite her scars, Mrs Eleanor Lovett was certainly something to be gandered at.

Suddenly it occurred to him. It wasn't solely her beauty. Lucy was beautiful, as was Johanna. And Celeste. What Mrs Lovett possessed was infinitely rare in a woman. It was not the sort of rat cunning Beadle Bamford had inherited from his line of degenerate ancestors, nor the despicable deceptiveness of that abominable Sweeney Todd.

Eleanor Lovett, he at last understood, was ruthless, quick-minded, ingenious, aphoristic and manipulative. There was no other human being he had met over the course of the monotonously passing years as a magistrate who matched his intelligence and wit – more importantly, whose philosophies were so completely in concurrence with his own. To be plain, they were the perfect match. Now it was only a matter for him to convince her…

"Is there a problem Judge Turp…"

"_Septimus, _if you please," he said, lowering his voice significantly.

He frowned slightly as he watched her frantically smooth down the layers of frilled dress. She had not yet thanked him for it.

"Mind you don't ruin the material," Nellie scolded as he knelt by the bedside and put one arm around her neck, the other underneath her legs. Any movement hurt her these days, and Nellie had grown increasingly used to keeping a calm face when the needling nerves ran amuck through her legs and spine. "Wos this your mother's too?" There was more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice, and the Judge was not so entirely enamoured of her that he could ignore it.

"No," he said gruffly, placing her easily in the chair and kneeling before her feet. 'I had it made specially for you, my dear. Consider a little gratitude may be in order." His lowered his face so that it loomed close above hers.

"You still 'aven't told me where we're off to today," she reminded him, not at all fazed. She'd endured so much of Sweeney's intimidations that she was now all but used to having imperious men attempt to scare her witless into abject obedience. And there was no way she was about to call him Septimus. It reminded her of sewage, or sepsis.

"That," he said, steeling himself upright and taking the handles of her chair, "is a surprise. You must breakfast first, and I must see that everything is as it should be."

He wheeled her to the end of the corridor, when the stairs presented problem.

"Didn't think o' that, did ya?" said the woman smartly, smirking up at him. She might be imprisoned in Turpin's maze, but it didn't mean she had to smile and laugh and comply with the man's every wish.

"Beadle," called the Judge, ringing the bell cleverly placed at the stair landing.

The Beadle came up five minutes later, wheezing and puffing for all the world as if he an impregnated toad. _Disgusting, _though the Judge and Nellie instantly at the sight of the Beadle's bulging waistcoat.

"Wheel the chair down," he commanded, lifting Nellie into his arms as he did so.

"Contrary to wot you might think," Nellie said stonily as the Judge began to carry her down the steep steps, "I'm not quite as daft as the last lot of floozies you milked. I won't be fallin' for you bringin' flowers an' the like, so you can forget about it straight off."

By the time she was finished, they had reached the bottom of the stairs. The invalid was placed ceremoniously into her velvet seat, and the Judge resumed his wheeling duties in silence.

"I wos there," Nellie continued, not caring that the Beadle was also in earshot of her speech, "when Lucy lost 'er marbles an' tried to poison 'erself. Sorry, she _did_ poison 'erself. Ain't nothin' so sad Sir, as a mother wot can't even feed her babe. You might want ter think on that, when you go ter bed an' say your prayers –"

The Judge wheeled her to the end of the lengthy ebony dinner table. There were only two plates set, and yet the entire thirty seat-table was laden every which-ways with food.

The Beadle sat down to eat straight away. His plate was already stained with food scraps and the like, and without waiting, began to heap it to towering heights with meat, sweets and other rare delicious meals that a prostitute or orphan could only dream of eating in Burtonian London.

"You forget that I too was there," said Turpin, gripping the edge of her arm chair threateningly, "and saw the woman deteriorate before my eyes. I took that child and offered her a better life. What could a widower have offered her, but more destitution? You could barely afford to feed yourself. The child would not have survived the month."

"Which ought to beg the question, _Lord _Turpin, what good you did gettin' rid o' poor ole Benjamin Barker in the first place!"

"This conversation, Madam, is at an _end._ Enjoy your breakfast."

Nellie watched him take his hat and cane, and storm out onto the street.

From across the dinner table, a pair of beady rat-eyes had also been observing.

"Just you and me then, Mrs Lovett," said Beadle Bamford with a grin.

*** * ***

**Kudos to Mirei for the "Burtonian" neologism =D**


	17. The Lesson

**A/N: Shout out to the-sadisticalovett-nutcase for predicting this chapter in her review. As always, thanks for the reviews!**

**~The Lesson~**

There they were. Fruits as such her eyes had never seen. The bowl of cherries was the most beautiful item on the white-clothed table.

Almost wine-red, almost the colour of her curls – when she'd had them.

"Cherries, Mrs Lovett," Beadle Bamford offered, pushing the glazed bowl directly beneath her nose.

She stared at the glistening orbs, still wet from being washed. They reminded her intensely of red blood drops; the sort Mr T often had dripping from his hands or shirtfront after a particularly trying day…

"Cherries," he repeated, dispensing with all politeness. "Have some."

Poor women couldn't afford cherries.

They existed in fairy-stories, on the banquet table of a King and Queen's wedding feast, something so sweet and strange that only a demon or faerie or witch could have conjured them up. Mrs Lovett had never tasted cherries – yet she knew they were paradise's temptation. Mrs Mooney had said so. Her mother had said so. Even Mr T, she felt certain, would have shared cherries at Christmas with his wife and babe. Albert, may his soul rest in peace, never let her spend any of their savings on fruit. Awful spendthrift spent it only on cartons o' gin instead. No wonder where me god-awful habit got started…

"I know wot they is." She studied the yellow-toothed, greasy-haired man contemptuously.

It wasn't a habit of hers to be honest. Much better to lie, fewer hearts got stirred and hurt that way. Times such as these, however, Nellie felt it best to make an exception.

"Don't take this personal dear, but I can't stand the sight o' yer. If you don't mind I'll take the window seat."

"There's no decent view, I'm afraid Mrs Lovett," said the Beadle, getting to his feet. The olive green breeches did nothing to disguise the copious amounts of fat that spilled from his sides and from the bulk of his gut. The baker wrenched her gaze back to the cherry bowl just so as to avoid displaying the extent of her disgust.

He picked at the food as he went, taking his leisurely time to reach Mrs Lovett's side of the table. "Shame about the face," he sneered, evidently deriving some sort of Beadle-ish pleasure in seeing the famous flirt of Fleet Street deprived of her most enticing weapons: one of those desperately large furnace eyes. The Beadle didn't have the brains nor the sensitivity to plunder the depths of those fires, nor ponder what they meant. A cleverer man, the Judge possibly, would know what to do with them.

"Pity your mother never loved yours," Nellie returned, resting one of her sleeved hands beneath her chin and smiling wickedly. Scars couldn't strip her of her wit, nor could Mr T, she thought with a frown, thinking of the unsigned letter waiting for her upstairs under her pillow…

Beadle Bamford chuckled. He came right up close to her wheelchair. He did not tower over her, but it was unpleasant all the same, to sit so close by the Beadle's bulging stomach, rancid breath; those foul blonde strings of hair. He lowered his face by hers, those rat cold eyes smiling away as if she belonged to his private circus exhibition.

"The cherries, Mrs Lovett." The smile had gone.

"I'll pass, sir." At that moment, she did not fear him – but then what was there to fear, after all Mr Todd had done to her since?

"You don't remember, do you Mrs Lovett?"

"Whatever it wos, I'm sure it weren't worth rememberin'."

She'd never seen the Beadle without his black gloves on, and it was odd now to watch him pick up the cherry in between his thumb and forefinger, and pop it into his mouth. More than odd, she realised, as he chewed open-mouthed, letting the juice stain his vest-front. She thought for one awful moment…

"The Judge gave me special orders to see that you eat."

Nellie drummed her bare fingers on the white linen. It was much too white for her liking.

Time often passes so dull. The moments waiting for customers to pop in for a pie. Watching the dust settle on the bench. Waiting for Sweeney to surrender another body down the trap door chute. The laborious breaks in between cutting up the dead….waiting, waiting…when after all that waiting, a person's life, Mrs Lovett's life, came down to those thrifty thirty seconds waltzing with the barber toward the open furnace…

"Lord Turpin _will_ be pleased, I'm sure," he grinned.

Bamford was not an overly agile man. Yet when it came to torture, he was more than adept.

He grasped the handful of cherries, pressing them forcibly past her slightly parted lips.

Her first instinct was to gag and spit them out. This she quickly found was impossible. The Beadle had pressed his stubby hand over her mouth, the other behind the back of her head. Immediately she understood the danger. If she turned, or moved, or threw herself violently backward – the Beadle could simply break her neck. She had no doubt he would do so.

"Chew," he said pleasurably, and the baker had no option but to obey. "I hope it's worth your remembering now, because I surely won't forget."

Nellie was too busy choking on the cherries to reply. But he knew the moment she lifted her eyes. She remembered, alright._ Smiling_ suggestively at him. _Asking_ him into the parlour. _Pretending_ to undress, and at the last second clobbering him over the head with her rolling pin.

"I'm glad I can at last return the favour," he sneered, sneezing all over the rest of the cherries.

The cane came out from under the table. He placed it on the table beside the cherry bowl, and stroked it fondly. Cradling his gut with the other hand in the fashion of a pregnant woman, Beadle Bamford lifted the cane gently, and with one sharp movement snapped it outward.

The baker's eyes flicked toward it like a snake. It was steel hidden beneath that glossy wood – he had a bloomin' sword!

"_Mr Bamford sir –"_

He delivered the blow with a pleasurable smile.

The first cut across her neck.

The others followed, with the same sharp, switching motion as the first. He attended to the two corners of her back as if she were a donkey or a horse he was flaying, instead of a woman in a wheelchair. If Mrs Lovett had been on her feet and back to her old self she would have chased circles around the table until she'd bludgeoned him senseless with her rolling pin. But now she was white and feminine and frilly and crippled. _God knows wot Lucy must 'ave felt when that grubby –_

"You'll take – _care, _Mrs Lovett," said the Beadle as her delivered the seventh blow with great concentration, "to _remember _– your betters."

The wheel chair was too close to the table for her to move. She was stuck fast there, forced to keep her back upright with her face directly before his rat-like countenance.

A thin slice of chicken clung to his lip. His smile widened, and the white slither fell from his skin and moulded with the carpet. She didn't see it fall. The colourless lips were coated in brown gravy. They smelt of roast potatoes, lemon cheesecake, cinnamon and Spanish olives. The grotty texture and the mixture of smells reminded the baker of the blood that got stuck and stained on the grooves of the bakehouse floor.

"I should – also – be doing – this – for those poor gentlemen – you so _thoughtfully _stuffed into pies."

The Beadle lifted the switch high in the air. His gorged stomach heaved for respite.

The reprieve was worse for Nellie. There was blood oozing from her back, she knew. She gained no joy out of the white table staining red. Her eyes grew heavy as the Beadle resumed his work, cutting grooves into her skin. She'd once got the same pleasure stripping skin from flesh in the bakehouse, grinding them bones, popping the fat into the fresh crusting and searing the raw meat in the oven till it roasted well; but even on the worst days when she hated the work and wondered if she was satan's bride severing fingers and toes, there'd always been the lovely image of Benjamin Barker to cheer her in the darkness. His face had been as luminous as them angel's haloes, so young, so promisin' fresh, and his dark eyes were chocolate warm _– _the same as a hot tea at the end of a balmy London day.

Now the remaining cherries were dead. The red little eyeballs squashed and splattered on the white cloth. Had she done all that with her elbows? The food stunk; the meat was off, the half-devoured turkey on the far end of the table seemed to bleed out its own stuffing. It was too dark with the curtains shut, just as dark as her mildewy bakehouse had been, only there she'd had barely no candles or fancy glass chandeliers, just Albert's old oil lamp. Once Mr Todd had come bursting down there at a quarter to nine at night with his eyes blazing and scanning the room as if he'd just come from the devil's chamber itself. He'd watched her finish scraping the meat of the final victim, and disappeared upstairs without another word. She'd never thought to ask him neither.

Till this day she never knew what it could have meant.

The Beadle wiped sweat off his brow. His arm was tired and even vengeance had its limits. Pretty soon he'd have to cease and threaten the baker into keeping quiet around the Judge. His lord had only been gone a half-hour – in his current mood he would not be back so soon. But first he would have the woman cry out and plead with him for lenience. It annoyed him intensely that she gave out only spurts of stifled gasps, instead of shrieks of pain. His stomach yearned for another slice of ham, but as it was…the trollop _had_ to learn a valuable lesson. He would not endure humiliation, and what was more, he was not to be trifled with.

"I am none too pleased, Mrs Lovett," the Beadle began maliciously, "_none too please –"_

"_What _is the meaning of this?"

"Ask – him," Mrs Lovett gasped. The blood had somehow found a way to seep inside her mouth. Her cap fell off on the floor.

Judge Turpin stood glowering in the doorway, his eyes fixed on the scene. His eyes had always held that especial hollow quality, but now there was nothing to be seen in them but the same feel of a cold wind hurtling through a poor man's alleyway.

"Come with me Beadle," was all he said.

Mrs Lovett did her best to smile through bloody teeth.

*** * ***


	18. The Greater Good

**~The Greater Good~**

For the benefit of the greater good, a Judge must necessarily be a hardened man.

He must overlook trifles such as broken limbs, snapped necks, bulging eyes and bones poking through flesh. He was so used to the sight of blood on the bodies of thieves, braggarts and criminals, that it ushered in him no ill feelings at all.

Mrs Lovett's taunts had driven him from the house and onto the streets of London. What else was there to do, but observe the latest hanging?

He imagined the bloody spots that dripped from the man's nose were nothing more than wine, or muddied water. When the eyes rolled back in the head and the neck pooled red with blood, Turpin gave a small nod and smile to the crowd, and moved on.

Fate could have dished him out the life of a poor, malign beggar, but it had not. Fortune smiled on him again. He was no longer troubled by weeping, unresponsive blondes, and now had the elusive Eleanor Lovett to contend with instead. He did not want to admit it to the Beadle, but the woman had stirred the nerves in him. She was fast regaining her health, as well as her spirits. Sweeney Todd's former lover had far more of the witch in her than angel.

He could, of course, satisfy his urge the easy way: unlock her door in the middle of the night, lay down beside her in the bed, and silence her screams with his hand. Lucy would not have let him have her any other way, and Johanna would had to have been sedated or knocked unconscious before he could attempt it – but the baker, he sensed, was different. If he could only persuade her he was sincere, then perhaps…

"He deserved it, didn't 'e Lord Turpin!" yelled a toothless washer-woman from the crowd.

"What man has not," said the Judge with a smile.

He was no longer interested in the lifeless body hanging below the scaffold. The hanging had improved his mood. It bothered him so little he was able to stop by the florist's on the way home and purchase a bouquet of violets. Somehoew he knew violet was her favourite colour.

The little he knew of Eleanor Lovett was enough to convince him she would fall. Her dress, her manner of speech, the way her devious eyes invited him in; all of that had to be considered. Mrs Mooney had been more than helpful. According to her, Eleanor had been widowed these past five years, and her business (as well as her looks) had gone downhill ever since. She was an incurable flirt, and in the last eight months before the demon barber's arrival, Mrs Lovett had been seen cavorting on several occasions with strange men in the late hours of the night. It was rumoured that while her pie emporium was almost run into the ground, the baker's night business was thriving. And then that vicious pale-faced devil of a man turned up at her shop, and since then the pair could not be parted. Everyone knew that Nellie Lovett had more than a healthy fancy for barbers, and until Mr Todd went mad and tried to burn her in the oven the whole of Fleet Street assumed she was going to give birth to the bastard son of a barber…

Yes, Turpin knew enough of her circumstances to know how to handle her.

His good mood lasted until he crossed the threshold and found the woman of his dreams with her head near-slumped in a bowl of cherries and the back of her dress soaked in blood.

"Come with me, Beadle" he said as even-toned as his voice would allow.

The Beadle lowered the switch. The greasy man had his back slightly to the Judge, one hand gripping the baker's shoulder.

There were days when the man of the law no longer felt like the man of the law, but rather more like a dusty old man with only a library of perverted books and a perverted henchman for company. And he would not be far wrong.

"Mary! Eliza! Help her!" It sounded odd to hear such concern issue from his own lips.

The maids bolted downstairs, and gasped on seeing the insensible woman.

He heard her moan something, but Turpin could not look at her then. The sight of her crumpled form reminded him too much of what he had done to Lucy on that night of consumptive lust.

After he had finished with the barber's wife, he had no longer heard her plaintive cries. In fact, the last he'd seen of Lucy Barker alive was on that very masquerade floor, her white dress swept before her like a broken fan. It was not a proud moment of his – but he could not undo it, no, he _would not_ have undone it.

*** * ***

"My lord," began the beadle with a grin the colour of sandpaper, "I strived only to follow your orders."

They were in Judge Turpin's waiting room – a dull affair filled with stiff-backed seats, brown cushions and black floorboards.

"By beating my mistress to a pulp?" The Judge trained one steely eye on the stocky man. The other half glanced back into the living room where the blood stains all too clearly delineated a pattern on the floor. "Speak rashly, and I may be forced to _adjust _your tongue."

"Pardon – if you please, my lord," the Beadle paused to snort a generous helping of white powder up his nose, "she's only – your mistress, once you've slept –"

_"Enough."_

Normally, a one-word command was enough to silence a man as cowardly as the Beadle. This time, however, Bamford knew he was being short-changed.

"The tart deserved it, lord! She flattened my head with her damn rolling pin."

"No doubt the woman had good reason. She served the barber all those months. Her loyalty earns her credit."

"Bearing in mind, _my lord_, with all due respect, that her goal was to end your life. Forgive me my boldness, my lord, but what makes you certain the minx won't try something – _ahem _– like that again?"

"Eleanor Lovett is wheel-chair bound. What possible grief could she cause?"

"She's already brought you great grief, my lord. You've abandoned your nights. You are never out anymore. People are beginning to_ question_ your reputation."

"You forget, Beadle," said the Judge coldly, "that we are _not_ companions. I pay you to use your judgement – now acquire some."

"Very good sir. All is forgiven then?" the Beadle rubbed his nostrils hopefully.

"You have deeply disappointed me Beadle. The wound you have inflicted me…you are to remain in that corner. Whilst I consider your future."

*** * ***

Not all of Judge Turpin's house was turmoil and torment.

Somewhere in the west wing of the topmost floor was a pleasant sun-room with pale pink and yellow wallpaper.

On spring afternoons it caught the afternoon sun and lit up the drab carpets and shelves so splendidly that it seemed as if darkness would never come again.

"As if you could bottle the sun in a jar," sighed Nellie, when at last the Judge arrived and delivered her a curt nod.

Turpin would not have gone into that sunroom, had it not been for the baker. He had designed it especially for Johanna, but the child had not taken to sitting for long hours by the window while he read to her, and eventually it was shut up for good.

"It is a charming room, is it not?"

Nellie bestowed him a brief smile, and it was enough to transform not only his mood, but the room itself. Charming was not a word she had expected the Judge to use.

The maid had set a tray of tea and biscuits by a round little table, and was pouring the steaming liquid steadily into two cups as they spoke.

"Leave us," the Turpin said.

The maid bobbed a curtsey, and disappeared.

The Judge and baker eyed each other carefully.

"I have spoken to him. He will be dealt with."

She was out of harm's way, at least. Pale, drained, despondent. But nod dead. A book lay open in her lap, the servant's had bathed and dressed her in a navy gown, and her new-grown locks of hair were brushed softly around her face. For a moment, her pensive gaze, the way her neck and profile turned in brief contemplation of the setting sun – Eleanor Lovett reminded him of Lucy by the window, or Johanna in her sitting chair. But then the eyes were on him once more, and there was nothing placid about Sweeney's former accomplice.

"Will you talk?" It unnerved him, that not a tear, nor even a frown crossed her face.

"I've nothin' to say."

He joined her by the window, hands clasped behind his bask.

"I find that difficult to believe. Mrs Mooney tells me you are not one to be lost for words."

Her expression grew considerably cooler. "Wot other tidbits did you 'appen ter pick up?"

Turpin did not allow himself to look at her. He might stare too long. His hands might betray him. Caress the stray hair beneath her ear.

"No man is above the law," he remarked casually, tapping at the fly that clung to the outside of the glass. Below, the streets were suffused with the slight fire-tinge of sun and stained puddles, shop fronts and the gleaming locks of women's hair, rich or widowed, poor or wed. "How would you have me deal with him?"

She laid the book aside, and motioned for him to take the seat opposite her. She was not long in answering. "Mr Fogg 'as a charmin' little asylum – you know it well enough, I shouldn't wonder. He's a great specialiser in wigs, 'e is."

The Judge sat stone-faced in the velvet chair, now forced to look at her. "I do not take your meaning."

"The Beadle bein' a proud possessor of such fine blond tresses an' all," Mrs Lovett said in between sips of her tea.

Her eyes held his, still and owl-like. Yet he was not entirely fooled – her hands shook holding the saucer.

He took it from her just as it began to slop into her lap. "Save removing his manhood, madam, such a punishment would deprive him of all that he holds dear – with the exception of his life."

She frowned. "Then you really mean it? You'll 'ave 'im punished?"

"I do not say anything that I do not _mean_," he said with an upraised brow.

"Why did you stop 'im? Hittin' me, that is."

For a good while, there lay nothing but sun and silence between him.

It was clear she was not jesting. He looked at her sharply. "Even I have my standards, my dear," he replied

This seemed to satisfy her. She spread her hands imperiously on the arm-rests of the chair. "Well then, thank you Lord S."

He continued to watch her, his tea untouched. At last her eyes grew heavy and drooped into restless sleep. Her fingers dug into the chair.

It was not hard to guess who she was dreaming of. Was it always to be this way? Was he always to run second best to a barber?

*** * ***

"Sweetie! Sweetie!"

She clung to his arm and whined in his ear.

_"Not now."_

The barber left the beggar woman leashed to the lamp-post, while he ducked under cover of darkness into the dreary shop.

Could he go through with it? The first step would be the hardest, and after that... There was no going back, he decided. He was doing it for the greater good.

"How much for the ring?"

"Not much." The hawker eyed him suspiciously. He immediately disliked any man who came into his shop sporting an oversized hat and upturned collar. Experience had taught him it was deadly dangerous if you couldn't see their eyes.

"It is worth a great deal sir. I beg you reconsider."

"This is a pawn-shop, not a charity. Sell it us, or nick off!"

The man's hand hovered between the counter top and his pocket. For a brief moment it looked as if he had some gleaming weapon concealed there…

_"Take it."_ The man snatched the bills and coins up, and fled the shop.

The hawker held the ring up to the light. _Benjamin and Lucy Barker_, _forever tied,_ ran the inscription.

A chill grew upon him. He couldn't count the number of wedding rings he'd sold and melted down.

When at last he set the ring on the counter and turned to the window, the beggar woman was gone.

*** * ***

**Bet you thought I forgot all about Sweeney...=D  
**


	19. Severed

**A/n: Sorry I haven't updated for a while. Let's just say this chapter isn't going to be too pleasant for one of the less cherished characters.**

**To Trixie-firecracker: don't worry, Sweeney doesn't think of the beggar woman **_**that **_**way. If he did he'd have to be pretty desperate =D**

**~Severed~**

"Got a present, sweetie-pie, got present for you sweet."

"Go away." The barber shook the beggar woman off him, as if her gnarled hands were no more than the fog curling around them.

The streets were not bare.

The rain smoked and steamed against the pavement. Black umbrellas marched to the tune of the mirthless sky.

A funeral carriage clattered over the cobblestones. The white horses snorted and shook the black plumes whirling about their heads.

It could not have been a bleaker day had Sweeney gotten down on his knees and begged for it. He turned – he'd walked the length of the street and saw the grey-stained beggar was still on the corner, playing in the mud.

The funeral procession did not startle her. "Horse!" she shrieked, getting to her knees and pointing at the animals.

The festering skin, straggly hair, withered eyes – all of it was once Lucy's. He was clinging to less than a memory. The ghost of the ghost of his perished wife. He clutched the purse of coins in his pocket under the grey shadows of sickly sun. He could see the bare white ring of flesh where his wedding ring used to sit. He had lost it all. No photographs, no lock of hair, no ring. Benjamin Barker's life was now erased.

Even back on the island, when he had spent days staring through the brick-sized window in his cell, the faint glimmer of his ring was there to comfort him. The weight of it trapped his flesh over years of carrying and laying the sandstone bricks of the prison walls. The calluses grew thick, blisters burst and skin peeled. His flesh grew pale and thick around his fingers. But the ring would not give itself up.

And neither, it seemed, would the beggar woman.

"Stop that." Sweeney tugged his sleeve away from her desperate lips. She was sucking on the frayed edges like a child.

"Eat, sweetie."

A plump, dead pigeon was dangled before his face.

Its blank eyes stared beyond him. Its beak was open, and he thought immediately of Mrs Lovett's mouth gaping at him as he hurled her toward the flames.

There was no need to make a scene.

He shook her hands until she was forced to drop the filthy creature, and marched her down the laneway that led to their secluded apartment.

"Up!" he commanded her, and up the beggar woman went, gargling happily and kicking her skirts over the steps.

When they were safely ensconced within, he sat the addled woman down by the kitchen table, tying her hands and feet together with bits of torn bed sheets to prevent her from tearing around the place and trying to dangle herself out of the window.

"Sweetie!" She was whining at him pitifully, but the barber ignored it.

He was contemplating the letter on the table. It was barely a letter. He wondered if the baker would come. If she came, would she come out of curiosity, at least? Perhaps she wanted him dead. He was running a great risk. If anyone else but Mrs Lovett turned up, his plans would be ruined. That was why he needed the beggar woman, for now. She useful while ever they believed she was a harmless beggar woman unattached and alone. Who would imagine she was shackled to a demon such as Todd?

Sweeney pocketed the letter. He did not want to ponder it anymore. He had done the damage. It could not be undone. Mrs Lovett chose to be with the Judge of her own volition. Lucy would not have accepted her fate so placidly. She would not have consented to the Judge so easily. She would have –

Sweeney checked himself. He would never have thrown his wife into an oven, once upon a time.

Down on the streets, the clatter and crowd had slowly transformed. The ease and bright and bustle of workers and women shopping with their male escorts and children playing skittles outside shopfronts had died. Now London's true form opened up. Poor men, pick-pockets, prostitutes and the like came and went as the night burned on. The faces grew drearier, drawn and fierce. A stocky man jostling through a group of prostitutes caught his attention.

His stringy blonde hair stood out amongst the drab suits and dresses. He carried his cane beneath his arm, ducked his head and grasped his hat with the other arm.

Beadle Bamford himself, huffing and puffing like an overstuffed Christmas turkey with its crest cut off.

Sweeney's eyes followed him as if a watchman from a tower. He left the beggar woman crying at the table and dashed out the door. Such an opportunity only came once.

*** * ***

They agreed to meet in the library.

It was the one place where she did not feel so much a prisoner.

Nellie was a great reader. She had never much money for books, of course, but she knew enough friends off whom she could borrow enough books to fill a ship wreck. She still remembered the first book Benjamin Barker had loaned her. _Evelina_. It was Lucy's book, but that was hardly the point.

"Feeling better, I hope?" The Judge stood on the threshold, as if he were afraid she might collapse in her wheelchair if he took another step.

"I ain't a bird, Turpin."

"You are not a man, either," he began, "you should not have to endure –"

She cut him off. "Being imprisoned? No wonder your poor little ward went mad."

He looked at her sharply. "We will not discuss such things."

Nellie wheeled herself toward the book shelves. "Wot you wanna discuss then, Lord S? This?"

She picked up a red book trimmed with gold binding, flicking through the pages with deliberate leisure.

He came forward. "They are not for a lady's eyes," he said, attempting to snatch it from her. He noticed the baker was wrapped in heavy shawls. To hide the wounds seeping, probably...

She wheeled out of his reach. It pained her to move at all, but she could't have him knowin' that. Give him a moment of Lucy-weakness an' he'd pounce on her. She knew. "But you'll try those things on me?" She gave him a cutting look. "Not far from the truth, is I Lord S?"

The Judge lost some of the colour in his face. "If this is about the Beadle's behaviour towards you…"

"I don't give a rat's about 'im!"

"Then what?"

She wheeled the chair directly in front of him. It was beyond clear from the way she looked at him that she was not afraid. He was not adept at reading the faces of the fairer sex. But there was something else in her expression, something close to –

"I wanna know about Lucy."

His eyes darted to the open pages on her lap. A man was kneeling before a woman –

He closed his eyes. "Know that I did not intend to hurt her."

"That's all very well," Mrs Lovett went on, shutting up the book.

"You were there when I took the child, he said quietly. "you know."

"Why d'you think I can't trust ya?"

"Very well." The Judge looked at his shelves. Anything to avoid her scrutiny. "I loved her," he said after a time. "She was…innocent. There are not many of that sort left in London."

Mrs Lovett nodded, though she was inclined to swap the word "innocent" with "simple."

"…I had to have her….by consent, or by _other means_."

"As simple as that?" She drummed her fingers on the corners of the book.

"As simple as that," he admitted.

She was tugging on one of her curls now. On the side of her head that had grown back hair. "Permission ter speak candid-like?"

"You will anyway," scoffed Turpin, remembering the recent candle attack.

"Unless you 'ave lingered by an empty fireplace for fifteen ears, mournin' the fate of the man who don't even remember you when 'e comes back…an' continues ter love a ghost, an' not the one who cleans 'is shirts an' cooks 'is food an' cleans up 'is murders…then you've no idea wot it means to love."

"He threw you into the oven," Turpin reminded her.

"Let me ask you this, Lord S," she went on, "do you still think o' Lucy? D'you wish you could 'old her, sit wif her, 'ear the sound o' her voice?"

He did not answer her. His eyes pulled reluctantly from the shelves, and rested on her expectant gaze. "And you?"

"Wot about me?" He was watching her strangely. His face remained blank…but the eyes roved.

"Do you…still wish to do those things with Todd?"

"'Course not," she said quickly, handing him back his book and wheeling out of the room.

*** * ***

"Mr Fogg doesn't take men's hair. Too coarse."

The Beadle stuck a fraying shoe in the entrance to the asylum. "In my case, sir, you will make an exception. Order of the great Judge Turpin, you see," he said forcefully, prodding the scraggy man with the butt of the cane. Even in his lowest state of humiliation, the Beadle sought pleasure in squishing those lower than him. It came naturally to him, as it was natural that a woman such as Mrs Lovett would prostitute herself to the next man who provided her sanctuary. In this case the Judge.

"My hair, you will find, is as delicate as any gentlewoman's." The beadle gave his hair a decided flick. It was his prize possession, apart from his cane.

"Very well then. S'pose none'll notice. Sit down quick, I've got me pretties to see to." Fogg darted his eyes toward the locked cages with the brunettes, blondes, and redheads. He drew out an engraved pair of scissors, and in several swift snips had seized the blond stringy tufts in his hands, and left the Beadle ragged and bald. "Done."

He placed the money in the Beadle's coin purse.

Despite himself, Bamford smiled. He would grow his hair back easily. In the meantime, he had two objectives: first, to find the most expensive den in all of London, and blow his wig money on coke; second, to avenge himself against Mrs Lovett and her wheedling craft and seduction. The Judge might adore her now, but the Beadle knew his master well enough to know that it would not last. She would fall from favour, and when that day came, the Beadle would be there to help her into hell.

*** * ***

He began jostling the crowd with his cane; eager to find the den that would satisfy his hunger.

He did not know he was being followed until the last moment. The Beadle was an edgy man. But he was not cautious.

"Pleasant evening, sir," came a voice behind him.

"Yes, it is," said the Beadle, rubbing his stomach affectionately as he turned.

"But not for _long_," rejoined the man.

The second the tall figure stepped out of the laneway shadows – it began.

The Beadle knew he was going to lose more than hair that hour. Drained skin, hollow eyes, devil smile. The demon barber. Sweeney Todd. The glistening blades were drawn out of pockets. Bamford stared at them, mesmerised. "Kill me, sir, and every man in London will swarm upon you."

"Why would I kill you?" Todd pressed one of his razors swiftly against the Beadle's pasty throat. "You are no use to me dead."

He was backed against the wall. A glimmer of hope punctuated the Beadle's face. "Then what?"

He soon found out.

Todd flipped his victim's arm against the wall. In one slow, measured slice across the flesh and into the brick work, they were gone.

The Beadle watched them slide away from his hand like fat white worms. He could not scream. His eyes and mouth were gouged against the surface of the brick.

"Three days, Bamford," warned the barber, stepping over the three severed fingers twitching on the ground. "That's how long the Judge has to set her free."

The beadle jammed his hand in his vest pocket. Blood welled up inside the fabric. He made a fist with his other hand, and pressed it against the wall. "Your wife is dead," he managed to splutter.

"I mean _Mrs Lovett_, fool," said Todd, fleeing down to the end of the lane. "Release her."

The moment the villain had rounded the corner, Bamford stumbled back out onto the main road. He pulled his hand up to the lamp light, and let out a voiceless cry.

The crowd moved around him.

They saw the stumpy hand, and powered on. The man owed drug debts, or had harmed himself. There were enough mad people on the streets near Fogg's asylum, and most weren't locked up.

"Help me," the Beadle gasped eventually. "I am a Beadle."

When this sentenced elicited no greater sympathy from the crowd, he called out, "Judge Turpin will greatly reward whoever helps me."

A few men and women then recognised him as the Judge's servant and went to his aid.

"The demon barber is at large!" he blurted to his rescuers, before fainting dead away.

*** * ***


	20. Loving the Dead

**A/N: New Chapter for 2010! =)**

**~Loving the Dead~**

He had kept her up many hours reading to her from books of poems and epic battles of dead men.

He didn't seem to care or notice that her eyes drooped heavily by the fireside, or that his unclipped nails gleamed like the backs of dusty moths in the almost darkness.

He did not care, because Judge Turpin was a man used to having it all his own way, all the time.

"I will carry you bed," he insisted when she was already heavily asleep, dreaming of Sweeney swinging her hand by the seashore and skipping backwards into the waves.

_"Let me show you where the waves are soft and safe," Mr T said to her, reserving a small downturned smile for her. She was about to open her mouth and laugh in delight –_

"_Bed_, dear madam," said Turpin, jolting her awake as he carried her from the wheelchair across the threshold of her room.

"I can't sleep wif'out the candle," she protested.

The Judge gave a half-smile. "I think you can. Good night."

He was trying to consume her. Dry up all her body and strength and mind until her will was only for him.

"In his bloomin' dreams," she hissed, dragging her aching body out of bed to reach the window. She drew the curtains and saw that the moon was at its fullest. There was enough light. She crawled back into bed, took the letter from its hiding place and began to read.

_The time drags slow for me. I think of the fire when you are sleeping in his house. The flames smell much stronger now. _

_If you wish to see me, I will be at St Dunstan's on Tuesday. All day. _

_I think of Lucy. Then I think of you. Death is easier. My nightmares…I see Lucy in them. Her throat is that slit of thin red blood. I cut her voice from her. My Lucy. _

_And you are burnt. It only used to be the darkness that brought me to this state. Now I _am_ it, all hours. The old days are gone. All I know of Benjamin Barker is his name._

The moonlight stung her eyes.

She crumpled the letter and stuffed it under the mattress. She could not burn it.

"Benjamin," she whispered, looking up at the black ceiling with her hands on her stomach. The letter had brought up the flames again.

He had left her on the bakehouse floor. Her body was an obstacle he had sidestepped on his way up toward the light.

He had not cherished her skin. Her shoulders. The mess of her hair, or the curve of her half-smiles when she had been his willing sacrifice all those weeks of rolling bodies into the grinder. Why would he cherish her now? I must make my peace with the Judge. Give 'im wot he wants then get the hell out. Toby may be dead but who's ter say I can't still leave for the sea an' make a simple respectable life for meself.

She shut her eyes, and imagined it was spring and the bad winter wind was just starting to blow away. She was lying in a garden somewhere, and the sky was wider than any sky she had seen before. The clouds were smooth and white. The light coated her skin so gently she might float away…

Footsteps creaked just outside the door.

Bet it's the flamin' Judge she thought angrily, clutching her scarred body as she sat herself up and watched the door. It wouldn't be unlike him to saw a hole in the bloody door so he could spy on her while she slept.

It wasn't him. Another letter slipped under the door.

"Creepin' Jesus," she breathed, limping toward the crack of light. She knelt but didn't sit.

_I'm outside. I will wait briefly. The back entrance._

She knew it was Sweeney. The beautiful hand. Her mouth grew dry. What did he want from her? Was it another trick to get to the Judge? "

No point anyway," she muttered, latching onto the knob. Trapped up here like – suddenly she realised the envelope wasn't empty.

The iron key stunk of rust. She had no idea what Sweeney had done to obtain it. The message was clear enough: I give you the choice.

Free yourself, or stay. Now she knew. He had come for her. And he wanted her to want her freedom.

Nellie felt very grave, as if she were standing at the back of someone's funeral service. The choice was hers, yet now she had freedom it did not fill her with any joy.

What was it the old Ben had used to say?

"_I can never remember my keys."_

_He'd sat out the front of his tonsorial parlour with his new bride and babes smiling and laughing and picknicking on the stairs. He had a special grateful smile for the barber when she'd come home from St Dunstan's with a spare set of keys for his shop –_

Well that was long over and done.

She didn't know. Could she bring herself to care for him again? He had brought her to this second oblivion. She didn't know if she could bear a third one.

Her hands shook as the key guided her to the hole.

It turned, and no ghost barber lurked on the landing. She forgot about the letter on the floor.

Found herself turning, turning slowly down the corridors like a woman unleashed from a mad house.

She'd drown wherever she went. That's what came of lovin' a dead man, she supposed.

*** * ***

"You came."

He had kept to the shadows. The wind was loud enough to mask his footsteps on the gravel and the guards had not seen him pick the door lock and enter the back entrance.

"I'd 'ave ter be a fool ter stay in that prison-'ouse."

She was much thinner, and made no pretence of smiling. "Wot you want?"

She hugged her arms against her. He saw that standing was a struggle for her.

"You read the letter."

She nodded. They studied each other. Every few moments his ear caught the back door, straining for the guards.

'Why did you come?" he asked.

She shrugged.

He surveyed her properly.

The baker's eyes were not so casual. Everything there spoke of dark contemplations, of a world as pitiful as his own.

"You killed me, Mr T," she said. Her hand reached out to pick at the wooden doorframe. The scars did not escape him.

"You've haunted me dreams these months an'…I feared you an' wished you dead an' wished meself dead –"

"I did wish you dead that day," he said quietly, taking the step forward that breached the many hourless caverns that separated them.

"I even rejoiced it, weeks after," he went on, looking at the torn threads of his jacket. "How is possible…that I don't now?"

He was drawing her in again, fighting her to look at him. "I don't know," she said stone-faced, half wanting him to lose interest and go away.

It was happening again. His presence took over, and her mind had no reasons: only the bleak hollow that knew what it meant to die slowly without uttering a single word.

"Don't pretend," he said, taking possession of her shoulders. They weren't bare, he noticed, as they once were –

"Help!" Thunder broke into the silent disarray of their world. Not true thunder, but the thunder of man crying out to fellow man.

She looked at him in the old way – when she had given him anything without question.

He led her out the back entrance. All around them, the lights came on.

"Quiet," he whispered, and carried her along the shadows of the wall.

"The guards are gone," she said emptily, but he did not release her.

He rushed across the grounds until they were across the street and staring back at Turpin's house of sin. It glowed.

*** * ***

"He threatened me," the Beadle wheezed, clutching his now bandaged hand. "Three days. That's how long he gave you," he repeated again, snorting the white powder from the silver snuff box with his free hand.

"I doubt he can do any more damage than what is already done," mused the Judge calmly, studying the Beadle's new stump with the barest interest. "I will have the police force step up their night patrol. We will hang him, my friend. Have no fear of that."

"The ladies will not adore me now," the Beadle said mournfully, rubbing his shorn head. "It's all gone now, me hair and my fingers."

"You understand, Bamford," said the Judge slowly, swilling his glass around in circles, "that Eleanor was only jesting. That was not your punishment."

The portly man's eyes swivelled to the closed door. "The she-witch," he said under his breath, his mind churning now with all the torturous plans he could devise.

They both descended into the pits of their spirit-glasses. Turpin looked into the depths of the liquid, and saw only one face. It was not his.

"Sir! It's urgent! Sir!"

Another person disturbed the Judge's private library that night.

"What is it?" he snapped, rising to the sound of the knock. Would he have no peace?

"Sir!" It was Mary, tying her skirts and bobbing her head anxiously at the two deadly men.

"Well, out with it girl."

"It's the patient sir! She's gone."

*** * ***


	21. The Unpleasant Surprise

**A/N: I do realise there's an unpleasant "surprise" in nearly every chapter, but this author is running short on names. Thanks to It'sOnlyForever.x, the-sadisticalovett-nutcase, Resplendent Shadows, shadowoftheblackrose, SweeneyToddRocksMySocks, AngelofDarkness1605, and linalove for reviewing. I don't think I can wait one more month for Alice in Wonderland!**

**~The Unpleasant Surprise~**

"Search the rooms."

"We already have, sir."

"Dismissed! I will search them myself."

The Beadle was eager to follow. "One guess who helped her escape, my lord," he began, heaving himself up the staircase.

"I don't pay you to cogitate,_ friend_," Turpin snarled. "The premises are well guarded. No one could have entered." His chin was a maze of sweat and stubble. He stood by the staircase while the Beadle readied himself to break down Mrs Lovett's door.

There was no need.

"It's open sir," said Bamford in amazement, staring at the white note fluttering on the floorboards as if it were some ghostly apparition.

"Pick it up," Turpin hissed.

The Beadle reached for the note as a crow plucks a treasure from a rooftop.

"It's from _him," _the Judge breathed, tearing the paper up after scanning its contents.

"No name on it, me lord," said the Beadle unhelpfully.

"I know, fool. I recognise the hand. The barber wrote me that lie of a letter informing me he had rescued my Johanna from the sailor. I do not forget a person's hand."

"Why would that Todd bother rescuin' her, if you don't mind me askin' sir? I thought he wanted her dead."

"I too was under that impression," muttered Turpin thoughtfully. "It is likely he is using her as bait. The deluded woman still harbours feelings for the monster, and it appears he knows it. I believe his plan is to lure us onto the streets, and destroy us when we are weak and exposed. And need I remind you," said the Judge, eyeing Bamford's severed fingers, "he nearly succeeded."

"Then we must catch him!" seethed the Beadle, his thin eyes glittering. "Kill him, for he deserves punishment for what he did to me!"

"I am glad you volunteered yourself, my friend," said the Judge enigmatically, "for that is to be _your _honour."

*** * * **

"Put me down Mr T."

She didn't recognise the street they were in. He had led her far south of all familiar landmarks. Mrs Lovett couldn't have picked the direction of Fleet Street if her life depended on it.

He put her down, but kept her hands twisted behind her back. "How do I know you won't scream?"

She rolled her eyes. He should know her better, if he knew her at all. "Love, if I wanted ter give you up to them coppers, I'd 'ave screamed me lungs out already. Why don't yer just admit it?" she rambled, letting him drag her limping body alongside him.

He turned on her suddenly. The shadows in the alleyway masked his expression. "Admit what, Mrs Lovett?" he said carefully.

She wasn't intimidated any more. He'd already killed her once. She was doing better than Mrs Mooney's cats, so far. "You didn't rescue me. I'm just bait for the Judge. He's comin' after me, that's wot yer bankin' on. Or maybe you wanna slit me throat instead."

"Listen, _my pet," _he said, squeezing her arm, "I don't want to kill you. If I let you wander the streets, the Judge would have you caught within the hour."

"Is that so?" Nellie remained unconvinced. He released her arm, and resumed walking. She could not believe him yet. Perhaps she'd never believe him. Forgetting was not possible for a man such as Sweeney Todd, and how could he forget something as deep as her betrayal?

"This way," the barber said gruffly, pulling her out of the side street and up a flimsy flight of stairs. "If you want to be free, wait it out a day or two. The Judge will have his spies prowling the streets as we speak."

Nellie shook her head. "I ain't movin' until I get a bite to eat. If I know you, there'll be nothin' but rats lurkin' in wotever filthy hole you've snagged for yerself. I don't care if they catch us no more. Take me somewhere to eat Mr T, or I'll scream blue murder."

"That's absurd Mrs Lovett," he reasoned. "Nothing will be open, and we could be recognised."

"Don't care," she spluttered, limping stubbornly alongside him now. "An' don't tell me you don't know some seedy back alley food-house, cos even you has ter eat."

Was it for old time's sake? Was it because Mrs Lovett in the flesh reminded him almost of a ghost, and what he had done to her haunted him? Or was it because his own body was on the point of near collapse? Sweeney Todd didn't quite know the answer, but he found himself leading the woman to one of least respectable off-the-beaten-track joints in the neighbourhood. Even criminals had to eat.

*** * ***

It turned out that the many hours spent putting up Sweeney Todd's wanted posters over London were well worth it.

"Sure I seen 'im," said the white-bearded beggar man on the corner of the run-down borough. "He ain't changed that much, even wif the clothes and hair. He walks up that staircase ter that building everyday."

Beadle Bamford smiled greasily, dipping his hat to reveal his newly bald head. "For your trouble," he said, throwing a few pennies into the mud.

He didn't bother trying to locate the landlord. He'd passed a locksmith two streets back, and it would be no trouble to have a key made that fit, money of course, being no object. He had a spare dagger in his vest pocket, in case his cane didn't get the job done.

*** * ***

An hour later, the Beadle was whistling a tune as he clambered the flimsy staircase up to the squalid apartment. When he felt that no one was waiting to bludgeon him on the other side of the door, Bamford attacked the lock, and kicked the door open. Nearly all of the apartments were unoccupied. It seemed that his good friend Sweeney was squatting. He tested the last apartment at the end of the hall. No knocking, he thought, we want to catch the bloodthirsty fiend unawares, and then beat his devilish brains into the floor.

"Sweetie! Sweetie's home, Sweetie home, Sweetie sweetie sweet-deet-deetie!"

The door swung open, and the beggar woman's face fell.

"'Fraid not my dear," said the Beadle with a foul grin.

"Not Sweetie!" she bellowed, trying to extricate herself from her binds.

"Don't you move a muscle." Bamford did a quick sweep of the apartment, satisfied that Todd was not hiding behind the door or under the bed. "I doubt Mr Todd will even suspect you missing." He flicked the glittering cane toward the table, and the blade shot out faithfully.

"Sweetie!"

*** * ***

"Why you doin' this for me?"

Sweeney hesitated a moment, before answering: "Christian spirit."

The baker looked up sharply. Laughter escaped without her realising it, or him.

It must have been the first time either of them laughed since the fire. Mrs Lovett didn't know whether to feel furious or pathetic.

"Come this way," he directed, raking her body over with his eyes. She was much changed, and yet she was not. It was the same short, sure woman he had always known. The hair had grown back wispily underneath the nightcap. Her skin had gained the smoky pale pallor of a patient shut up inside all day. Just beneath the hairline of her neck, he saw the raw welts on her back. They were not burn scars. The barber wondered what other scars lurked beneath the skin.

It was not his right to rescue the woman that he had not married, could not marry, and could never own. Lucy was forever his dead bride, but it was not right for Mrs Lovett to be tortured twice. He could not let the Judge prey on her the way he had done Lucy. If only he had been more vigilant in the old days, the Judge might never have had the chance to steal Lucy away from him. He could not reclaim the past, yet the future he could influence. And Lucy would want him to help his partner-in-crime.

"Mr T?" She looked at him then, her eyes swirling with a dozen thoughts. "You alright?"

They ascended the stairs together like old times, only Nellie found she couldn't bound up the steps like she once had. How funny it was, the simple things she relished.

It was slow going. "What's wrong?" he said impatiently, seeing her pause on the third or fourth step.

"It's me weak eye," she said, the rest of the words inaudible: "the one burnt by the fire."

It made something as simple as balance quite difficult, and she had to grip the rail to stop herself from pitching over.

He made no comment, taking her free hand and helping her up step by step. "See all this effort, my lamb," he said almost imperceptibly once they were at the top of the stairs, "would be wasted if I wanted to avenge myself on you."

"An' why 'aven't you?" She let his hand fall from her, and watched the demon of Fleet Street carry out as simple an action as fumbling with the key in his pocket, and opening the door.

He stood aside to let her pass before him. Each caught the other's gaze.

"I already have," he said matter-of-factly. It was as if he believed he had been destined to harm Mrs Lovett that day in the bakehouse, and even now made no promises or wishes that he could take it back. Sweeney Todd's soul was only satisfied when it had damaged everything beautiful in the world. He could not even keep a hold on his only happy memories. How could he begin to know how to care for human life?

"It's the room at the very end," Sweeney explained, leading her halfway down the unlit hall. The beggar woman was still tied to the kitchen table. It would not do for Mrs Lovett to see that, not when she was on the point of trusting him again. "Wait here," he instructed, stalking up to the peeling door. He never ran. Sweeney did not believe in running.

The door unlocked easily, but there was nothing easy about the sight that confronted him.

After so many months of hardened killing, the scene should not have come as a surprise.

"Oh god." It was as if Lucy had risen from the dead to die twice. "_My Lucy." _He would have wept, if Sweeney had known tears.

He didn't even hear Mrs Lovett coming up behind him, until he heard her whimper and cry almost inside his ear.

"In 'eaven's name, wot 'ave you done Mr T?"

*** * ***


	22. Fly

**~Fly~**

The history of the world, Nellie was fast learning, was to be betrayed by the ones you love – many times over.

"Wot did you do?" she repeated the question.

_By the sea Mr Todd, Mr T by the sea –_

It should have been obvious from the blood splattered floorboards; the pool of blood gathered in the centre of the kitchen table where the beggar woman's head rested.

_That's the life I covet, covet, covet –_

"You murdered 'er, didn't you?"

Nellie did not shake, though her knees wanted to fall from under her. She did not throw up or faint clean away, though she wished she might have done both things. She was witnessing the bloodbath of an unchanged man. Sweeney Todd simply couldn't help himself. He took blood when he wanted it, from whoever he wanted.

_How I covet, covet, by the sea Mr T, we'd love it, love it –_

"You can't give 'er up, can you?"

Nellie felt like his new bird. His amusing plaything. Just like the yellow-haired ward once stuffed up in the Judge's tower, bower.

"I didn't kill her Mrs Lovett," said the barber eventually. Some of the breath had returned to his lungs now he'd seen the worst of it. He didn't care for this beggar woman the way he'd cared for the real Lucy, but that didn't erase the scene. Someone had murdered her, and would have to be punished.

He brushed past the baker, and searched the poky little apartment, top to bottom. "There's no evidence. How did they know where to find me?"

_Can we – still be – married? _

_Toby, where areeeeeeee you love?_

She had no love, Nellie realised. All the people who loved her were dead. Her mother. Albert. Toby. Her miscarried children. Nothing that was done could be undone.

And Mr T had not changed a jot. Still up to his old tricks. Bleedin' women and consignin' them to the flames. Resurrected anger bubbled over and spilled from her throat.

"Wot's the matter Mr T," she mocked, "weren't there a fireplace big enough to chuck her in?"

His eyes clicked onto her as if they were the dials in a watch announcing the hour. "That's a dangerous accusation to make, my pet."

"You're a dangerous man, Mr T," she said woodenly, backing away from the threshold. "I ain't convinced you didn't bump 'er off."

"Why would I murder the effigy of my dead wife, Mrs Lovett?" he said through clenched teeth.

There were never so many questions when she was a child. Why couldn't they for one day go back to picnics and popping balloons and making little fairy bread sandwiches? They were sweet times then, when she'd had the heart to believe in fairies.

_By the sea, by the sea, know you'd love it, love it –_

"You tell me love," she asked finally.

Lucy No 2. was mocking her. The blood coated the woman's face like whore's make up, but it did not destroy the remaining strands of blonde locks peeking from beneath the bonnet. Someone had slit her throat, and done a real good job of it too.

_Can we, can we, can we – still be –_

The clouds outside could not be seen. In her mind, however, they swirled and gathered at an alarming rate, just as if the baker had always coveted clouds and dark truths, instead of that shining, storm-free sea –

She no longer coveted her life by the sea.

"Goodbye Mr T."

Some things could not be altered. He should know this as well as she.

She was not fast on her feet, but the laughing little beads of beggar woman blood spurned her on.

_By the sea, by the sea, by the sea._

Mr Todd was shouting for her.

He was like Bluebeard shouting after her with his blade, just as if she were his seventh wife and had stumbled upon the bloody chamber. She had not asked him to butcher again. The fool's part of her had believed Lucy was finished and banished from her life. Her life then, had been mostly a fool's errand, these past fifteen years.

She had fooled herself, and he had allowed her to go on fooling them both.

"Mrs Lovett, you silly nit," he called.

He was coming after her now. She didn't turn to see if he had a blade.

She kept her sore legs dancing down that corridor. She would pay the price later.

"You're not going back to the Judge!" Sweeney roared.

She was already on the threshold of the stairs. He was at the corridor's end. In another world, you might say.

There were too many things bearing them away now. Perhaps he cared for her, in his twisted way. But what could excuse the woman's death back there?

"Fool," he snarled, but the fool was already hurrying down the stairs.

He did not bother to chase after her. If she was that desperate, the baker would scream and raise hell to get away. And for all that he _did _need her in this time, he refused to hand himself over to the Judge. It was not hard to guess who had murdered the beggar woman.

He let his feet follow the worn path back to the apartment. He would close the door, and begin cleaning up the mess instantly. He could not have his neighbours know he was a murderer – or better still, he should flee tonight. Now that the Judge knew his exact whereabouts, they would come back to find him. He had to get his few measly belongings, and get away –

"Mr Todd. Back in time for tea, I see," someone snorted.

The fat, bald man's face erupted in a clown-like grin.

Sweeney, by comparison, emitted as much cheer as an undertaker.

"Beadle Bamford," he said tonelessly, as if he had been expecting the unwelcome visitor.

*** * ***

**Were any of you surprised? =p**


	23. Return

**A/N: As always, eternal thanks to all you readers. You are the reason I write this. Since I'm really tired at the moment, I'm just replying to your reviews here (don't worry I won't normally spam chapters like this!):**

**bella-thedarklady: I'm glad you like the background lyrics, to bad we can't hold Sweeney at gunpoint and force him to chase after her, eh?**

**linalove: As always, I love hearing from you! =)**

**the-sadisticalovett-nutcase: I won't spoilt it for you until you read, sorry! =p I didn't believe you about the Tim Burton exhibition until I googled it ~ guess who might be heading to Melbourne this winter? =D**

**StrawberryStoleYourCookie: Thanks for the review! Shout out to Phantom of the Opera, my second favourite musical =D**

**ShadowoftheblackrOse: Again, I really appreciate your honest reviews. I was aiming to chill with the lyrics, so I'm glad you think I achieved that. =)**

**Sa Satin Amoureux: Your comment on the Beadle inspired this chapter, honestly it's true! I have my own plans but I'm equally influenced by reviews!**

**AngelofDarkness1605: I can't really say much in reply to your review or else I'll give this chapter away! =p **

**~Return~**

The Beadle wondered in the last moments of his lascivious life: should I have done things differently?

Chief in his thoughts was the ache of an unfulfilled fantasy: that _he _might become the great Judge Bamford, in the event of Lord Turpin accidentally tripping down the stairs or having the misfortune to trip and land headlong into his bedside chamber pot. The Beadle had so many life plans, you see, one of them being his dream of one day opening up his own opium den, and picking and choosing the finest quality snuff. It was only now that he realised he was lazy. He had squandered his days eating –among other activities – and now he was about to go straight to hell, with nothing to show for it. _Blast._

"Listen, dear Mr Todd, we're both friends here," he said composedly, not for one moment forgetting the itching fire of his severed fingers beneath their bandages, "perhaps we can work out some arrangement –"

"Quiet." Sweeney advanced wielding the familiar blade.

He had breached the Beadle's hiding place, under the apartment stairs. Bamford had planned to wait until the Sweeney had gone back up to his room, and take him by surprise, but now it seemed that he was once again on the receiving end of the demon's blade.

"I don't want to kill you."

"_You –" This _was news indeed!

"Wait."

The barber called him back, while he was in the very act of scuttling away.

"You won't return to the Judge, Beadle. As long as Mrs Lovett is within the vicinity of Turpin, you don't approach them. You don't touch her. If you do, I'll know."

The Beadle's eyes were bursting with incomprehension, and a need for a feed, among other things. He knew the sort of man this creature was, and it wasn't a man. As far as Bamford knew, all men were cockroaches scuttling about the lowest regions of some cosmic basement floor, but this breed of evil was too strange for even his rat cunning. If he hated a man, he had him hung, unless circumstances prevented him. And Mr Todd surely hated him. Now that they were almost close enough to smell each other's underarms, why didn't the barber seize his opportunity? But the Beadle bowed his head and nodded vigorously, wondering what dark angel had chosen to spare his life twice. "That sounds reasonable, Mr Todd," he got out.

"Good."

In the few brief slashes of light across the brickwork that announced the coming of dawn, Sweeney Todd had thundered back up the apartment stairs, and slammed the door. Completely unconcerned.

Bamford sat there for much longer, while the rest of London took its time waking up. He was as dumb and wide-eyed as one of the fish laid out for market, and it took the local chief inspector coming down the alleyway with a bleary-eyed platoon of his men just off night-shift to send the rat scuttling off.

**~*~*~*~*~**

Across the other side of the suburb, another creature was fleeing for her life.

Nellie Lovett was not afraid of the dark, or the streets, or the evils that lingered there, for she was as much a part of the evil as the Judges who handed out sentences to hang orphans, or let the law work good men and women for hours down the mines, and hours more in the factories. The baker would never think her crimes as heinous as Judge Turpin's, but then again, she had never really stooped down to stare those dead men in the face, and contemplate what sort of men they had been alive, and what families they had left behind. She would never contemplate such things while cutting them up, or in the long night hours afterwards, for that meant turning into the depths of her soul, and finding out she was as cruel as Turpin himself.

_"Angel Gabriel," _she murmured as she ran, remembering some half-taught prayer now that all her plans were in tatters.

It was not her nature to get caught up religion or thoughts of her spiritual fate, but what if it was true, what those stern-faced priests had shouted in the church halls in her childhood? What if her soul was beyond redemption?

In the old days, when she could stand the wafting smell of human flesh, Nellie had thought she and Sweeney had been the perfect match, because of all they stood for, because they could not help their behaviour. Because they so often despised the rest of the world. Yet here she was, fleeing.

He had rescued her, come for her in the dead of the night to steal her away like she was some warped Rapunzel and he the half-dead Prince blinded in both eyes by the thorns that bound them both to their profession – but the fairytale had failed. He had taken her to his palace, and shown her the true nature of life, to kill and be killed in return. The most shattered and innocent were just a weak mimic of what it meant to be human, and the vicious and strong – she and Sweeney, were not even mimics. They were both less than, and more than human. They were outside, non-people.

"Lettuce me dear, an' fresh eggs!" a man plying his fresh garden greens wheeled past her in the slowly waking street.

"No thanks," she shook her head, pretending as if walking out in her nightgown and cap were the most ordinary thing in the world.

In the end, she could philosophise all she liked. It all boiled down to one fundamental question, really: if Mr T could kill a beggar woman, what was stopping him from killing _her_?

There was some swirling madness in Nellie at that moment, or she would not have done what she did. The white building stood out like a burning mirage before her.

"Ah, my dear," said that long-dreaded voice floating out from the threshold. "You've returned."

Judge Turpin, beckoning to her from across the flood of the waking human tide.

***************


	24. Violent Joy

**A/N: The title is dedicated to our dear Judge T, because he really needed a lovely little moment after being the bad guy for so long =p Many thanks to the following reviewers: the-sadisticalovett-nutcase, StrawberryStoleYourCookie, ShadowoftheblackrOsE, MireiLovett1846, AngelofDarkness1605, linalove, bella-thedarklady, and Sa Satin Amoureux. Your patience is appreciated!! I hope you don't think she's gone all bonkers and what not, but it's true, Mrs Lovett is slightly confused here!**

**~Violent Joy~**

In Nellie's mind, there were many ways to be rescued from the deepest cavern of human despair. Some took to drinking themselves into a whirlpool of light and blasting sound and drowned voices; others spent their days ruling sentence after sentence, others sewed endless seams and picked endless threads until their fingers bled; others still took the easy route and had themselves tried and hung on the scaffold before they had even turned twenty-five.

It was a rough business, all this hurting and living.

As she contemplated all that she'd learned and missed out on in her own brief life, Nellie wondered if it would be nicer setting off to one of those dreary country nunneries and covering her wild curls up with the black habit. She'd get three square meals, the chance to close her eyes at night without fear of waking and finding Sweeney's empty gaze before her face, razor aimed, or still worse – nothing more than empty air, for she was sure that candles were always burning in the house of God. And there she'd think of nothing but prayers and banishing sin and angels in the air – angels that looked with halos and blonde hair – too much like Lucy for her liking.

"I won't stay, Lord Turpin," she said with the formality required for a woman of her station addressing a magistrate on the street.

"You may decide that later," he replied, offering her his arm.

As muddled as her thoughts were, Nellie managed to appraise him carefully.

It was barely dawn, but already, the Judge was dressed in his court garb, dusted down and freshly shaved. She caught a whiff of an odd fragrance, and realised it was the Judge's own particular scent. It hadn't occurred to her that wealthy men might afford their own perfumes. She hadn't exactly had many gentleman-like customers in the days after Albert had died and her pie-shop had gone temporarily broke…

"In this way, my dear," he said with faux amiability, taking her hand and drawing her up the stairs.

"I came ter say me goodbyes," she repeated again, turning away from him to gaze down the length of the street. She was in no condition to walk. Her feet might lead her anywhere, when her mind was in such a state. Mostly, her thoughts were with Sweeney, wondering if he was searching for even now up and down the filthy lane-ways.

"You are a fool, Eleanor Lovett," said the Judge smugly. "Did you think I would let you go so easily, once you had fled?"He gripped her arm firmly, and before she could scream, cupped a hand over her mouth with his other hand and shuttled her quickly inside the entrance.

Waiting behind the doors were his guards. They bolted the entrance the minute their feet were across the threshold.

Nellie hadn't been thinking. All those months she'd longed to escape from that hell-hole prison; followed by those few fairy-like moments when Sweeney had appeared at the door waiting to rescue her – all of it flew out the window the minute she'd come face to face with that beggar woman's bleeding body. Around her still, she was barely aware of the chessboard floors, the early morning shadows, the blurred skirts of the maids lurking behind doors – all of her thoughts were focused on the flames that seemed to flare around her arms and back. They soared through her hair, up to the ceiling, around the arms that drew her into another warm person's being.

"_My Eleanor,"_ the person said, and those same hands swamped her back and neck, and would not let her breathe for several moments.

"Don't lock me up," she spluttered, unable to process more than a few meagre thoughts at once; the beggar woman, bleeding; the flames on the bakehouse floor, the smoke-filled sky pumping ashes of dead men from the furnace; _his _coal-black eyes on her face; oceans of water going over her head; that black little tomb the Judge was going to stick her back in –

"It won't do to have you run away again," he said lowly, his voice somewhere between her ear and beneath the curve of her jaw.

"Let me go," she said faintly, turning her head toward the slithers of light pouring in from the windows. It was what any woman was expected to tell the infamous Judge. There should be tears, pleading, tantrums and end-of-the-world speeches. If she were Lucy, she would swear by her love for Benjamin. But she was not Lucy, and Benjamin was a distant collection of smiles and hellos and conversations about the weather.

The Judge held her close, and her body did not revolt against the contact. "You betrayed me, my dear."

"I didn't leave," she lied, "I was kidnapped." Half-truths were Nellie's bread-and-butter, after all.

"You still returned," he insisted, burying himself against her hair. Her skin tingled at the lightest contact between them, and she found her own hands rushing up to connect with the smooth velvet of his jacket. Her mind whirled. He had intimated many lewd things during her months of imprisonment, but until this strange meeting of thought and feeling between them, she had not known this man was capable of deep human emotion. She had thought only in terms of the old leering man peering behind rows of flowers, grasping at young ladies at masquerades. She had not considered that beneath the mask he was as broken as the rest of them in this world.

"I did," she agreed, not knowing what else to say. It wouldn't do to be truthful, and admit she wished she were somewhere else, and yet longed for him to continue.

"Speak," he murmured, lowering his lips just by the end of her chin, and brushing them across the clammy surface of her skin.

She knew the words he wanted to hear, but she could not say them. The tremor in his voice was too much; at last she began to sense the weight of his affection for her, and could no longer gauge herself the depth of the waters they were descending down. If they went deeper, would they forget themselves entirely? She was the baker, after all, and was married (in thought, at least) to the demon barber.

He spoke to her again, and his fingers rose up to the height of his lips. The motion was enough to stir her, and she opened her eyes fully to find his own unblinking gaze drinking her in. He had held much of the flood behind liquid eyes and composed half-smiles, and now he was put to the test, now that the woman he desired was his to possess, it was near impossible not to want to share all that he was. Wasn't that the point of living: to love, and be loved in return?

"I can't –"

They broke contact.

She looked up at the ceiling. "I feel -"

"And what are your exact feelings?" he asked, bristling, his fingers darting away from her like shuddering moths.

"I didn't plan to 'urt you," she admitted. "Wot 'e does is beyond me control."

"And does he still have your heart?" The Judge waited her out, taking a few steps back to lean against the entrance hall.

His eyes did not move from her line of sight.

Nellie was in dangerous waters now.

**~*~*~**


	25. Unfreed

**A/N: Exhausted right now from my first teaching prac!!! But I'm determined to give you something, even if this is pathetically small. I may update more at the end of the week.**

**~Knave's Heart~**

"Does he?"

"Wot?"

"Does _he_ still have your heart?"

She was miles away, but she could not draw herself away from the Judge. Half of her was with him, and the other half, her shuddering spirit, was with _him. _She told herself she was mad. There really was no other definition for a woman who pined for her murderer - and Sweeney _had _murdered her that day. It was pure luck she had survived.

"Wot?" she pretended not to hear him speak. It was a fool's task, of course. No person who heard that voice could fail to escape. His voice was more than mere hallucinogen - it was the spell of ancient druids, blasting down from the ages into his low spell woven tones that echoed through the dull hall. Stirring, he spoke again, and filled her mind with the glorious images of a dream.

"Come here, Nellie," he commanded, and took her hands, as if she were a child learning the steps of her first dance. His face was so stern then, as he looked down upon her, that she couldn't help but laugh. He nearly dropped her hands. "This isn't the time for laughter, my dear, or is it? Do I amuse you?" His tone had eased into its familiar bitter stamp.

"No," she said quickly, wondering if she had fallen down a pit into the deepest underground of the earth (for that was how mad she felt, waltzing with the Judge), "only you cut a funny picture just now, Judge T."

"_Septimus." _His frown grew deeper still, and he drew her apart as far as their hands linked would allow, to survey her properly. "So lovely, and never to be mine."

His words took her aback. "Wot you mean "never to be mine." I 'aven't made up me mind yet, 'ave I?"

He did drop her hands then, and dusted down his carefully pressed vest. "Too late," he insisted. "You've already chosen. I see the thoughts written plain in your head, madam."

"Don't act like a father, Septimus. Not that I remember mine -" Her eyes grew wide. She had called the Judge by his first name. Neither of them were expecting that. "Wot I feel for you," she began unsteadily. Nellie had planned it all in her dreams, at least. She would be the charming seductress, as she had always been. But now her thoughts were spilling from her as if they were each two waterfalls falling down from opposite sides if a lake, she could not charm. Least of all seduce. "He has my heart," she said almost inaudibly, fearing a slap to the face, as she'd expect in Sweeney's case, "but then so do you."

"If I cannot have all of it, my Eleanor, and I speak plain to you, because you are one of the few people I trust, I will cut it out."

He did not stop her.

She went to the door, still dressed appallingly, and made to turn the handle. Suddenly she no longer yearned to be free.

***~*~*~**


	26. Caught

**A/N: This Author needs a good dose of Sleep, Johnny Depp, Shantaram, and J-horror. Unfortunately, she probably won't get any. But you all get update, and that's all that matters!!**

**linalove: Lina! More, as promised, and it's a trifle longer this time! =O**

**AngelofDarkness1605: Well, if I can make you feel sorry even for Turpin, that _is _something. =p The last line.....hopefully that'll make more sense in this chap! Good luck with your test!!**

**MireiLovett1846: I probably don't tell you this enough, but I love your reviews! I think he must *spoiler* love her too, but it really is hard to say at this point *cough author must shutup revealing plot lines* I can't say whether it's Turplovett or Sweenett, it's all up to Nellie now!**

**nellie lovett gracey: Alex, I just had to stick in a Knave reference, seeing how much I love that pairing!**

**StrawberryStoleYourCookie: Strawberry! I know, the last line seemed pretty strange, but I hope this chap manages to clear it up better. But I agree, she is insane! ;)**

**Razorblood: Yeah, Turplovett really is rare (or unfinished, in the case of one of my fav Turplovett fics, hence the reason I'm writing this!) Trust me, I never thought it would make for an acceptable pairing in the beginning, but the characters are just taking over, and they will do what they want, not what I want!**

**ShadowoftheblackrOsE: OMH Shadow, after what you described to me, I seriously think my complaints are zip. PMS feelings one day makes me ultra ultra grouchy. I could not handle that, I hope you're feeling better this week! I never thought that Nellie would be going through this, I had it all neatly planned (the plot) but she's taking over herself!!**

**the-sadisticalovett-nutcase: Sorry the chapters are short, I don't have as much time as I would like, but something is better than nothing, I figure! ;)**

**~Caught~**

She never did turn the door handle.

"Eleanor."

Freedom was a fickle creature. When she had needed it most, lying bandaged in the darkness in the prison-room, it had hidden from her. Now that she stood in this limbo land, on the threshold between the realm of the Judge's world and the din of London day, freedom teased her as lightly as the curtains lacing around the curves of light from the windows above.

Nellie could leave now – walk all the way to the countryside if she wanted, and turn her back on London forever. She was skilled enough to bake the sort of cheap pies that families holidaying by the sea would gobble down; it would make for a decent enough living – but her hand wouldn't leave her side, and turn the knob.

She was caught between worlds.

"Did you hear me?" The Judge crossed the room and came to face her fully. He was not the sort to sidle up behind her like the Beadle, and crack her head open like an egg. Nellie studied his unmasked face. Had he changed?

"No," she confessed, turning her head back and forth from him to the door. "I'm unsure, truth be told."

It was hard to look at him for long. A part of her was superstitious. What would happen if she stared into him for uncounted moments, as she had longed to do with Sweeney? Aside from those odd shared moments with her long dead husband, Nellie realised she had never properly held a man's gaze. It was no lie: she had no idea what it meant for two souls to meet reciprocally. Many times she had prepared herself for it; in vain she had cornered Sweeney in his unguarded moments to catch a sigh or shared silence. But she had cheated. Her one near-victory, when she had almost won his soul, counted as a false triumph. Nellie had used Lucy's memory to get his attention, and in the brief flicker of their reading in each other potential salvation – Anthony had burst in, and reminded them both that they were little more than two sad old middle aged dregs. But that slight glimmer of Ben! If Nellie only knew the potion to bottle that memory forever – gone, all gone. She had _imagined _it many times – the electric minute that the women of London whispered about and knew so well. It would not happen now – even if Sweeney chased her over every hill in England, the magic promise of that time had dulled and flown – how could she get her own burning death out of her head? He, after all, had chosen to stoke the flames.

"Unsure of what?" Lord Turpin took her hand again, and it was not the firm, assured hand she had been expecting. There was lightness there, a slight shaking, and tenderness. She felt all this in a few moments, and let her hand drop. Their eyes met again briefly, and in him she recognised the same mortal gaze. She knew it well. She had worn the same expression for much of her adult life. For now, she was not his victim, his captured creature. He was captured in her, and like two mirrors angled from opposite ends of the room, they each absorbed and reflection each other's essence.

"Who I am, wot I want." She got a half-choked laugh out. Her eyes shot down to the floor, unable to contemplate what she saw there in those muddy mirrors. "And it is right odd. I always knew, ever since I wos a girl."

"Knew what?" The Judge maintained a respectful distance, but his eyes never left her face.

Her voice drew quiet, as if she were that same child again. "That I loved Benjamin Barker. Even when 'e wos a boy."

It was a struggle for the Judge to keep the contempt out of his voice. "I am cursed, then, it seems. The two women I desired, both love the same man." He moved away from her. Not to punish. Not to scold. Not even to call the maids.

He turned the knob swiftly, and pushed apart the entrance doors. "Freedom is out there, my dear," he indicated with a sweeping hand toward the street. "If you still crave it."

She shook her head. "You don't catch me meanin'. I _can't _love 'im anymore. It ain't possible."

He barely blinked, pretending instead to fiddle with his collar. "It seems," he said calmly, "our arrangements are not suiting each other. I am a busy man, Eleanor. Sentences won't pass themselves. Women and children won't hang themselves, and I will not be your consolation. Good day." He gave the slightest bow with his head, and took to the stairs, moving measuredly with the heaviness of a hunched back.

On impulse, she followed him.

**~*~*~*~**


	27. St Dunstan's

**~St Dunstan's~ **

"Before this," Nellie said to the ascending shadow on the foot of the stairs, "you told me we'd go someplace togetha."

This was foolishness, of course, she reminded herself. The sort of foolishness that had flipped Lucy Barker's brain. Yet the Judge was playing no games this moment. He had offered her freedom, plain and simple. There were no strings. Might she see where her fancy led her?_ Down the garden path and six foot deep under the earth_, reminded the voice in her that still remembered all the nights she'd lingered in agony of bandaged oblivion, trapped in Judge Turpin's house.

But what if? The sense of his hand briefly lingering on her arm rose up then, as if the ghostly memory lingered unseen over her shivering hand. The darkness could cast magic and all strange romances, but this was daylight, and she had no reason to dress up any deed done by Septimus. He had done the most horrible things - but then so had she."Wos it true?"

"It was." The shadow paused mid step. "Where would you have me take you?"

_The Sea, _was near leaping from her lips. "The market," she said quickly, hoping it would qualify for a normal womanly activity. "I 'aven't 'ad a chance to admire them goose-feathered 'ats in months." She cocked her head slightly, wondering if he had bought the bait.

He came down to the foot of the stairs, downward eyes trailing over the nape of her neck as he travelled. "As you wish, my dear."

***~*~***

If Judge Turpin had moved a centimetre to his left at a quarter to eleven on a sunny Friday afternoon in St Dunstan's square, he would now be lying on a cold slab in a London morgue somewhere, instead of wandering around jovially with his hand curled around Nellie's arm, cracking smiles.

Sweeney Todd was bracing himself to fire. Take aim and cut short the agony of revenge. True predators do not wait to slay their pray, he realised. He should have put aside his razors many months ago, and slaughtered the Judge while walking down the street. He loved no living human being - what had he to lose?

Steam rose from the drains at his feet. Rotten meat splayed in thick stools of congealed mud. He imagined the ground was heavy and putrefied with the stench of month-old carcasses. And yet a few metres away, there it stood. He lifted the pistol in a brief requiem to his soiled past. There, the yellow glow of the old flower shop where he had first discovered the true beauty of love and equally, the depth of evil residing in the human heart. That day, Sweeney knew that every man craved for the flesh of another man pinned to the wall - if given the chance. And he had been supplied with ample chance.

"Back to work," he ordered himself, raising the barrel of the pistol up to his line of sight. A blur of cherry red dazzled his view - he lost sight of the Judge's greying head. A woman. _She_.

Dressed in the colour of blood - a gown that was no weekend dress for shopping. It raged of the fingered grasp of wealthy men, with white lace gloves and a cherry hat to top off the coiffured rings of hair. He'd hated such women for a long time - such women who succumbed when they should have been content to sit smoky-faced and bleary eyed by some weary cottage fire, kept warm by their husband's gaze and the grim crackle of fire. It had been enough for Mrs Lovett - no other woman would skin and shred and slaughter for love - but now?

Gone over to the other side. Dancing with enemy fire. He removed the pistol for the second time that morning, just to take in the exotic creature flapping her wings about the market square. Mrs Lovett.

Transformed Mrs Lovett. In the old days, in fact, _all _his days, he had seen her only as the spectre-woman, bringing up his slabs of stale bread, sloppy soup and luke-warm tea cups with the enthusiasm of a starving circus clown, her gaunt cheeks puckered and eyes brimming with the possibilities of love died and won. For he, the brute killer of Fleet Street, had won this woman's heart, and she would perform countless tricks to turn the faded bristles of his lips into smiles.

And still, the barber had not smiled, yet somehow - "can't kill her," he muttered to himself, deepening the creases with another frown. She had betrayed him _again. _But he would not kill her. Just the demon dressed in lamb skins, nodding courteously to all the farming lasses holding up duck eggs and plucked chickens and shallot bundles - no doubt he'd slept with all of them.

Through the barrel of the gun Sweeney had his vision reborn. A plain little cottage, shoal-floored and thatch-roofed, on the edge of a cliff or on the outskirts of some grey-stained colliery somewhere in the bitter cold of England. He would tame her there. He saw her quiet and intense wide-eyed, no spoken thoughts at all. She was cooking over a battling hearth, and the ends of her skirts were burnt. Both their hands were coated in coal. She never asked him to smile. It was a poor vision by any man's standards - but treasure to the poorest of women. The woman in his dream-world, his getaway from London, was no longer Lucy. It was a dark angel - the only type of softness allowed in Sweeney's world.

And, he realised, he could mend it all.

He loved her - as dead men going to the gallows keep their deepest secrets close to their chests, even as the noose is swinging ready, high, before their eyes. He loved her - and this goat would not have any more of his brides.

"Fire!"

Heads turned and bodies threw themselves to the floor, behind barrels and under stalls. A madman had been unleashed on St Dunstan's. Shouts echoed across the square as the slowest stragglers skirted around loose chickens and broken fruit. Judge Turpin was one of those stragglers.

"This way, quick!" Nellie was dragging the Judge back through the shattered stalls toward his home - but the man was pulled toward his enemy, as if they were magnets destined to meet at this exact point in London.

Sweeney stepped forward, hands raised open, crucifix fashion. "Not yet a success," he said, at last with a smile, raising his pistol in clear aim of his nemesis.

"It's blank," said the Judge, unsmiling, his arm blocking Nellie from stepping forward.

"Let's tempt fate," Sweeney suggested, charging the second shot.

**~*~*~*~*~**

**A/N: Whoopee, I'm on my one-week uni break!!! **

**linalove: Here it is, sooner than later, I hope! =D**

**AngelofDarknes1605: Wow, I've turned you into a Turplovett supporter! Woot! I'm guessing you're busy studying for your test right now, so *fingers crossed for you*, as always. Good luck!**

**MireiLovett1846: OMH I love your random Beatle references (or not so random in the Judge's case!) Ah, I don't think I remember the subliminal message you sent me? What was it? ;) ****And yes Mirei, you are always verbose. But that's why you're awesome (one of the reasons anyway =D)**

**StrawberryStoleYourCookie: Thanks for your encouragement! I'm glad you're still sticking by Nellie, even if she's gone battier than normal =)**

**Shadow: He he, I feel your pain Shadow, but you know cliffies are a girl's bread and butter, well, apart from certain barbers =D I too think Judge T really deserves it. ;)**

**the-sadisticalovett-nutcase: Sorry sorry sorry it took me so long to update. I feel like I've been separated from fanfiction for a LIFETIME.**

**MisssElphaba: Yeah, but poor Mrs Lovett still thinks Sweeney butchered the ole beggar woman. Although why she would be upset about that....=D**

**obsessivelyfanaticqw09: Two days late with the update since you caught up to it! I hope you and MisssElphaba will keep the pointy objects hidden! **


	28. Fail

**A/N: Yes, I know - shoot me! It's very late, but I have legitimate excuses this time! Uni work - plus sending off my novel to the publishers kept me busy the past few weeks. =D But I'm back, and we're all going to get a little crazy with this chapter. Thanks for reading and reviewing - you all know who you are!**

**~Fail~**

"You fail, _sir," _sneered the Judge, staring at the raised pistol as if it were a mere child's toy. "I suggest you learn to _load _your weapons before facing your foe."

He grasped Nellie tightly by the arm, and began to haul her away from the middle of the empty square.

Sweeney tossed the gun aside, unable to fathom….so many things. Why the weapon didn't work. Why the only woman in London with a scrap of pity left had betrayed him. Why a monster won all the women worth winning in the world. Why he was condemned to suffer. Why, why –

"You shall hang, Mr Todd," said the Judge, curdling his words with pleasure. "The law is upon you as we speak!"

The sound of bells rang true. Down the end of the street, Sweeney heard the clang of several bells, and saw the black helmets of officers wielding bludgeons. He would rot in gaol again – be sent off to that hellish island – or worse still – hung.

"You is _mad, _Mr T," was the last thing he heard the baker shout after him. The Judge had led her away. And she wouldn't think of him any more.

Briefly, he wondered if he might overpower the officers, steal a bludgeon, and go after the Judge…_"No._" Even in his head, the plan sounded folly. He needed to return to his original method. If he could not lure the Judge to him, he would have to wait by the villain's house – night after night, until he found a way to sneak in unseen and slit his throat until the skin bled dry with that longed for river of blood.

"Until then, mighty Judge Turpin," he said to the now-empty square. He picked up a fallen apple and loaf of bread, and made for the alley.

The sounds of the bells filling the square, and the shuffling and shouts of people coming alive out of the rubble came long after the Demon Barber had fled into the dens and secret nooks where the filth of London thrived.

The Judge whisked her along the now filled up streets.

"I know of a skilled surgeon, my dear."

"Oh." She kept her tone even. "And wot could I be needin' him for?" Wot was all this talk of doctors, then? Hadn't he promised to take her out for a treat? Take her away from the madness in her head – the same thread of Sweeney Todd actin' and speakin' as if he were truly hers and they were in a wind-swept cottage by the sea – wasn't the Judge supposed to be _helpin' _her, not pushin' her closer to the cliff-edge?

He was weaving them quickly along the main road, knowing that the barber could be on their heels any moment. Turpin's mind raced fast. The woman was shaken by his reappearance – clearly. Her mental state was already fragile – that was also well established. There only need be another little incident of this sort to topple her over the edge. Yet there may be a remedy, if Turpin could only remember the house number –

"A pity the Beadle is dead," muttered the Judge, walking briskly with his prize clinging to his arm with the ferocity of a crab tethered to a rock before the coming tide.

They stopped before a white marble house with an elegant black door and a brass-lion knocker. A doctor's name was engraved in gold beside the door.

"He will help you, Eleanor," said the Judge in that thriftless tone of voice designed to show his generosity.

She scoffed. "Help me 'ow? Turn me into one of them mindless women you've doubtless locked up in Bedlam?" Her good eye accused him – smooth, liquid ebony – but as hard as a vulture's when trapped. "You won't 'ave me that way Turpin – don't even think on it!"

"I'm afraid that decision is not yours to make," he said seriously, appraising the still scarred side of her face – the more than slightly wounded eye – the false red curls masking tufts of short brown hair. He would make her new again – and she would thank him for it.

Nellie caught the fever in his eye – and it terrified her more than Sweeney's wild waving of the pistol in St Dunstan's square.

"Let me go," she said determinedly, as the door swung open to reveal a young maid bowing and bobbing her head like a newly fed lamb. "Send me anywhere – Fogg's asylum, if you like – but not _this." _She couldn't know the truth of it – but Mrs Lovett had an inkling of what the Judge had planned for her. Had she been in her right mind anyway – to trust such a man? Where had it let her?

"I've a patient here," insisted the Judge, pushing past the maid and propelling Nellie straight through.

This must have been a snippet of wot poor Lucy felt that night, Mrs Lovett thought, coming face to face with the surgeon in the hallway.

"What should I do with her?" he asked the Judge.


	29. Mending the Portrait

**~Mending the Portrait~**

**A/N: It's confirmed – I'm not dead! Yes, this is so late I ought to be hung. Better late than never!**

"Send me anywhere – Fogg's asylum, if yer like – but not _this."_

The baker jammed her foot in the front door, and clung to the architrave like a child trying to avoid a whipping.

"Now, now, don't you be wreckin' the paintwork, miss," scolded the young maid, kicking the baker's foot expertly away from the door.

The Judge nodded at the maid appreciatively. "Thank you."

Nellie Lovett caught the fever in his eye – and it struck her as deeply as one of Sweeney Todd's looks. As she was far from innocent herself, she had an _inkling _of what he had planned for her. Was she mad to trust such a man? Blame hardly mattered now – she needed all her focus on surviving this…ordeal. Septimus, she knew better than most, could be merciless.

"Let _go o' me," _she repeated, tugging fiercely on the silk sleeve of his shirt.

Violet, she noted, with the daze of someone nearly suffocated to death. Foul thing, 'e wears violet. Great powerful man o' the law, an' yet still a fool for soft, pretty colours. Just like his little ward, an' weak old Lucy. Well, I won't let 'im pawn me off cos o' wot sick thoughts he's got churnin' round in his 'ead. Thinkin' some quack can cut me up an' fix me up somehow. Make me pretty again? It won't be. I wosn't a pretty bird before the fire, an' I won't be improvin' much now. _I can twist his thoughts yet. _Give me an hour, she thought to herself. One hour o' talkin' an' flirtin' an' false longin' an' eye-lash battin', and I can convince him to drop this madman's idea. Let me go, even.

Beneath her stewing, Mrs Lovett was mad. The fury and fear and desperation bubbled up inside her like the ingredients of one of her disgusting pies. All that slow-grown trust between her and the Judge – those little snippets of sweetness and affection, was rapidly crumbling. Wot wos he tryin' to do to 'er, operate her into some sorta Frankenstein bride?

"Don't struggle, my dear," said Judge Turpin with a smirk and sprightly step. He even sifted his hands gently through her curls, as if he somehow sought pleasure in her discomfort.

"_Septimus," _she protested, turning herself toward him with a face stripped bare of all pretence. It might be her last chance at salvation – lord knows the worst they could do. "You care for me, you liar. Wipe off that sanctimonious face, an' speak the truth!"

"I'd rather not," he said darkly, frowning briefly. "I've a patient here," he insisted, pushing past the maid and propelling Nellie straight through.

Poor Lucy. _Poor, poor, poor _Lucy. Silly git, didn't deserve the half-of-it. So this is wot it feels to be chopped up an' put in a pie?

The hallway darkened, and then lightened.

A man stepped through a half-open door, his methuselah beard draping over his waist coat. He was wearing surgical gloves, Nellie noticed, and there was a blue, rotting hue to the skin beneath his eyes. Just as if he'd spent half his life entombed in the darkness, turning his house into world of surgical night.

"What should I do with her?" he asked the Judge.

Judge Turpin turned to her with surprising tenderness, and lifted the back of her hand to kiss it. He let it linger against his chin, and half-closed his eyes, as if this were the last moment he had to savour her skin against his.

And who's to say it wasn't? Nellie thought miserably, clutching her skirts with her free hand. The terror of not knowing was greater than the knowing. And with the eyes of both men on her, like swollen fish in the sickening candlelight – she thought of Sweeney in the dark somewhere, seeking out the same thing – her face chief in his imagination – the thought of escaping the constant drowning tide of London night and the hierarchy of torture and entrapment that accompanied it. Surely this moment, they were both thinkin' the same thing – when was it their turn? When would she have relief? When would spring arrive, and bring long nights, fresh air, night sun-sets and ease to the people of this festering city? When would love have its turn to bloom through the mire of tar and blood and bad feeling here? Would the old wounds ever be shred?

Not now, clearly.

"Mend the portrait," the Judge instructed, jerking Mrs Lovett's face toward the candlelight for the doctor to inspect. "Here," he said, drawing a line down her face where faint scars briefly interrupted the rose-smooth surface of her skin. "Change it. Make her…unlike herself. I want it fixed…so that when I look upon her again, no man on the street will recognise her face."

"You are asking me to disfigure this beautiful creature?" Tingles and sparks of something infused the surgeon's hollow expression. "They come begging, so many rich ladies, asking for me to make them look a tenth of what she possesses! You will have to pay me much, much more for this operation!"

"Whatever for?" The Judge didn't break gaze from Nellie. He still had her hand pressed against her lips, and was staring intently into the pale curve of the back of her neck. To mess with perfection…

"To cover my own guilt! You want me to _undo _this." The surgeon shook his head and disappeared with the candlelight into the operating room.

"Will you speak?" The Judge said eventually, as they stood in the cold bridge between freedom and a path that neither of them would recover from.

"You're tryin' to scare me," Nellie said raggedly, suddenly grasping his other hand. "I know you won't do it. You wouldn't do it…"

"Think of it this way, my dear," he said reasonably, drawing her into a warped embrace. She could smell the moth-eaten holes in his neck-tie, and the old tinge of spice and oil against his weathered skin. "I can't expel that demon from your head – but I can erase you from London. I can make you a memory to everyone, and still have you mine. Didn't we both agree – I'm a cruel man. I did warn you."

So it was fixed. The fates always seemed to be against them - she and Sweeney.

When they were free to do what they pleased, neither Mrs Lovett nor Mr T wanted each other. All those months in the pie shop, he had avoided her like the plague. And when he'd finally seen the error of his ways, when he'd come to rescue her from the Judge's grasp - she no longer wanted it.

Yet now. Nellie almost choked on the air. The thought of it was suffocating.

Now, when their hands were tied, and their necks were bent to the guillotine, they had never longed for each other more.

And so she did more intensely this moment than almost any that had come to pass. The nightmare was before her – and she was longing for another, very different kind of nightmare. One she could never shake.

"_Mr T," _she breathed, as the Judge led her toward the torture chamber.


	30. The Torture Chamber

**A year. A very long year. If you're still reading this, your patience is without measure.**

**~The Torture Chamber Part 1~**

"**Try to close your eyes. It'll work out for the best."**

**He didn't say anything more for a long time, but in the dull blue room where the sound of instruments clinked like battlefield swords, it banished some of the demons.**

**The surgeon bent his free hand over her face, brushed free the fuzzy re-grown hair. They weren't dazzling curls, the fury red had cooled into a gentle brown, her hair. He smiled through squinting eyes, adjusted the chair she lay in, and Mrs Lovett was reminded of the barber's chair, Sweeney breathing over her, stalking back to the window, swiping his blades at invisible enemies.**

**This whole world was hopeless, really. Nellie knew she must be one of those deluded types, thinking the world could get better, the people in it redeemed, when really they had already sunken down one giant pit-hole to hell.**

"**I don't care," she said, her voice linger in the heavy air. "Just as long as you knock me out, make me deaf and dumb through it all."**

**Nellie had been tortured many times in her life, in so many ways she was incapable of articulating it.**

**She couldn't tell the world how she felt anymore, she couldn't form thoughts in her head of how she felt – not that London cared whether its people fell down in the streets begging on their knees. It was a cruel city she'd learned how to love – but now it had truly abandoned her.**

**The surgeon nodded, drew the dark further in by blotting out the cracks in the curtains with old splotchy newspapers, and began sorting out his knives – Nellie knew he wasn't going to be particularly careful, or gentle, or sanitary. How could he, when the Judge's specific instruction had been to butcher her face? If she didn't die from bleeding first. Nellie knew from stories of women friends in childbirth – some she'd witnessed with her own eyes – of painful, lingering deaths from blood infections. Better someone just clobbered them over the head, like the cats in the alleys before poppin' them into pies. **

"**If I start slobberin' and hallucinatin' and all that horrible stuff, be sure to off me, a'right," she said sternly. **

**Again, the surgeon nodded. He'd closed his business for the day, just to deal with this. He'd strapped down the woman, hands and feet, with leather buckles. She was surprisingly placid. But the pounding in his own ears wouldn't stop. And Judge Turpin's instruction. Mend her. Mend her well. Then return her to me. New. **


	31. The Torture Chamber Part 2

**I will be updating weekly. Nothing faster, nothing later. Thanks to: Sheila Chiaroscura (I haven't given up, in fact, it is approaching its close!), obsessivelyfanaticgw09 (I find it hard to believe myself, and I will update WEEKLY), Maxine the unknowingly admried (I tried to make this chapter longer!), Lamia of the Dark (Apologies, and yes, I realised just then - sorry!), MireiLovett1846 (thanks for your beautiful reviews, as always, eloquent and uplifting. I feel very rusty writing fanfic, so thank you), ImmortalDarkPassion (your review really rocked. I couldn't believe you'd hung in this long for another chapter, and it is going to change soon. Thanks for the inspiration! =)), the-sadisticalovett-nutcase (Sorry I haven't checked out your writing in ages, yes I am still alive! Yeah pretty much teaching has been eating up my life, I miss you guys lots and yes I will be also updating the Promise Price!) **

**~The Torture Chamber Part 2~**

"Things will work out for the best."

It was the second time he'd said it, and if Nellie weren't half-hallucinating and strapped down, she'd have slapped him.**  
**

No one who lived a poor life in London believed things ever worked out for the best. That's how Nellie knew the surgeon was lying.

The flicker of steel, shaded blue in the light of the blue room, forced her eyes on the floor. Dark floorboards – ebony, the name of the wood – her father had told her that when she was a child. "Only the rich men can afford ebony floorboards," he'd said once, as they'd stood in the doorway of a lord's house, a rich tapestry snaking over black boards the colour of dried, congealed blood. "So rich, these people are," he told the child Nellie, small enough not to know the ways of the world back then, "they've got enough money to swim in. They demand lovely slick black boards cut from ebony wood in the deepest, darkest forests across the ocean. We're lucky, Nell Bell. It'd make me soul shudder, to know I was walkin' across dead forest trees."

Nellie returned to the floorboards, reminded of all the things she endured so far.

Her father, going down into the mines when the sun had not even risen, and returning well into the dark, his eyes sunken under the layers of black grime, his face demon-dark under the lit candle she and her mother huddled around, waiting. Until one day he failed to walk out of the mine. It might have been a Tuesday.

Waiting. Nearly a grown woman, straining her eyes blind and turning her back and neck into a tired ache, bent over a tiny table with piles of brocade material, waiting to be sewn into dresses for ladies. Proper ladies, waiting to attend balls and dances. Nellie, spending many summers tied up in the sweaty work room with the other girls, watching their fingers line and toughen, and sometimes, when they had a break from routine, the people on the streets below, especially the ladies, lifting their beautiful dresses above the mud.

One summer, she spotted Benjamin, and the waiting began all over again.

She married, worked, ate, cooked, slept, worked, ate, cooked, and dreamed of the man she'd seen on the street, never knowing that he would show up at her shop one day, asking if the room upstairs was for lease. His face was lovely and fresh – almost like a girl's – unlined, his bottom lip pink and full. Nellie remembers the face, watches it age inside her mind.

Sweeney's face, full of fury, permanently furrowed and frowned. His presence in her house both warmed and unsettled her. And so began the waiting, waiting for the certainty that one person cannot spend the rest of their life trapped inside the prison of their own demons. She wasn't certain. No one could be, not with a broken man. Still, she waited.

And now, torture in the blue room. Again, betrayed by a man. First by Sweeney, now by Septimus.

Nellie had forgotten her own body, forgotten her fear. She wondered if all tired people felt like this before they met death – so tired, they couldn't feel their own body.

She shut her eyes, so she couldn't see the blink of the surgeon's knives.

Something began singing in her brain. It was off at first, out of tune, like an instrument under water. As the surgeon pottered closer around her chair, the sound rose. A whistle, like a child walking through an apple orchard. At first she thought it was the surgeon, but the sound echoed off, too far away. Somewhere inside the house. She had heard someone whistle like that, once before, but her mind was too much of a frazzled haze to remember who.

The clean steel sung, tapped against the metal bench, and Nellie's eyes flew open.

The surgeon was nowhere near her – his head was hung over the sink opposite her, the knife still clutched in his hands. "I should do it," he said to her. "I know I should do it. It's my profession, my art. My entire career is at stake, if I fail to go through with this simple "operation." I am no gentle person," he added, turning around to contemplate her bewildered face, "but you don't have the heart of a criminal – I believe. I think it is pointless to scar you, and I would not be able to enjoy it."

Enjoy it? Nellie shuddered, avoided the clear blue eyes that reflected nothing.

He unbound her straps and retreated to the shadows in the dull room, placing his knives under a red cloth.

She looked at him, not wanting to speak, not wanting to ask him anything. She didn't know why.

"You're thinking, how will he deal with Judge Turpin, when he discovers her missing?You should not feel concern for me, and in a few hours you won't. You'll remember I am the person who nearly ruined your life, and think no more about me. As for the Judge, I will tell him the truth, and he will be angry. But this will pass. He'll be suffering too much. He'll be dwelling on what he has lost."

At this, the man opened the door. He watched her rise with the eyes that shone with nothing – no real emotion, just honesty.

Nellie walked slowly, steadily at first, then stirred into a panicked run. The whistle echoed through the whole house – she couldn't place it – all she could do was stick to the shadows, keep as quiet as she could. Find the door, head for freedom. Find the sun.

The Judge whistled, opening one door, and then another, half-smiling as he caught the reflection of a clean and shaven gentleman in the glass cabinet. All for her.

She would be pleased, grateful – tearful – when she saw the Judge standing there, smiling, arms wide - there to prevent a tragedy, just when the surgeon had raised his knife, ready to perform the deed.

And she would love him, repentant, all sins forgiven, newly redeemed. Back in the arms of the father.

His smile faded, when he saw the empty chair.

Nellie stepped out into the light, and the whistling faded back into the darkness.

London was a cruel city – now she was determined to throw herself back into it – it didn't matter any longer, if it swallowed her up.


End file.
